Workshop news...
 
Brothers,

I reetings from workshop. I am writing this to you tonight from the Balfour Leadership Training Workshop at the University of Missouri.

I wanted to take a moment to convey some information that I have learned over the past couple of days. I have been here in the chapter adviser/alumni role, and my sessions have primarily been focusing on alumni relations. I am please to announce that there are currently some really great projects that headquarters has unveiled that I believe will be some really great resources for us to use.

First is the creation of a Alumni Mentoring Program. Headquarters is attempting to recruit 11,000 alumni from across the country to serve as an individual Alumni Big Brother for each and every undergraduate brother.
HQ has also unveiled a new mentoring program in which the former Cornerstone program will be revamped, with each chapter being required to have two alumni mentors who will receive training from the Cornerstone mentoring program. This would, in effect, give each chapter an alumni brother trained to be a greater resource in leadership training, RMF training, and basic character development. It is a great program and I am excited to hear that it will be available at the local level

The alumni staff has also implemented several new means for communications, including an extensive web service that will allow chapter advisers to have access to information, contacts, and resources to help better mentor their chapters. It will have a forum for chapter advisers to share information. In addition, we will have greater access to HQ supplied databases for alumni contacts. I have requested the HQ database for ET members so that we can have an up to date listing of contact information. The HQ database has over 95K addresses stored and is updated annually.

In the realm of RMF, Sigma Chi has created a very unique partnership to help address alcohol and substance abuse programs for undergraduates. It was announced today that Sigma Chi has become the first and only fraternity to partner with the Betty Ford Clinic to create a support program to help provide assistance to brothers fighting substance abuse. Sigma Chi is taking proactive steps to help combat the issue of substance abuse on college campuses, and we should be honored that our national organization has taken steps to be a leader in this area. There is a new program called CHOICES that will focus on how to identify brothers with problems as well as how to provide support for those brothers. I am requiring all of our RMF officers and Consuls to undergo this training course.

I also had a sit down with the RMF guy to answer some questions. Our invoice for the year is a little over 10,500 dollars, which is down a couple hundred of dollars. We did receive a 5% discount for not having any claims filed against us. Something I did not know, but as an alumni adviser, we are provided 11 million dollars in liability coverage through this policy. So brothers, please do not be hesitant to provide your support.

In addition, RMF has budgeted a matching grant of 3,000 dollars for the installation of a monitored, hard wired alarm system. As you remember, we had two estimates done last fall as part of our RMF evaluation, and the cost was close to the 3,000 mark. If we choose to accept this grant, we would have to have the system installed by Oct. 15th, at which time, RMF automatically would credit our RMF bill 3,000.

One aspect I am pursuing while I am here is the possibility of the creation of some type of capital campaign that might help us create more stable long term strategy for dealing with housing costs. I am looking into whether HQ could offer some type of assistance in creating a campaign to get alumni brothers to committ to a 5 or 10 year plan to help us pay the house off early, or at least create some capital to handle house upkeep or renovation.

Other than that, I have been involved in some really great discussion about the direction of the chapter with the undergrads who are attending this workshop. We really have a great group of leaders who are really focused on making some positive, lasting changes to ET. The main focus of our discussions have been on accountability and creating a vision and strategy for improving our chapter. Some of the concepts we are working on include:

• Implementing leadership and recruitment workshops into our pledge program and bringing greater value to our program.
• Requiring pledges to participate in at least one additional non-greek campus organization
• Rewards for brothers who also participate in non-greek campus organizations
• Implementing a strict financial policy with a focus on budgeting and ongoing capital creation
• Increasing alumni participation in mentor roles
• Coordination committees of minor offices to supplement major offices (quaestor and ways and means, magister and kustos, rush and public relations, etc.)
• Greater understanding of the expectations of the roles of each office and accountability for those officers
• Creating a greater since of pride in our chapter and our organization

It has really been a pleasure working with these young men this week. I request that you forward this email on so that all of our alumni can see the great progress our chapter and our fraternity are making. I also request that we, as alumni, commit ourselves to supporting these young men as they leave workshop and bring these tremendous tasks back to the chapter. The task before them will be difficult, but they are all dedicated to making our chapter a better organization, and an organization that will be the envy of other fraternities on campus. I have dedicated myself to helping them to be successful in their endeavours, and I hope we find the means as alumni to help them achieve their goals.

A side note about this workshop. The 2008 workshop has over 1,600 attendees, making it the largest workshop in the history of Sigma Chi, and the largest known in the Greek World. Your chapter had 8 attendees, the largest group of attendees for a workshop, at least since I have been a brother in Sigma Chi.

In Hoc,
Mike Maxwell
Chapter Adviser
Epsilon Tau Chapter
Sigma Chi Fraternity