Longwood's Chapter Excellence Program

When I first held an executive council position in my chapter one of the things I least liked was something called "Requalification". I did not know it at first but I quickly learned this was the program (that had been established years ago)that Longwood's Greek Office used to evaluate all chapters on campus. However this was not a very good program because of the requirements set and jsut various reasons it was out of date or out of reach for our campus.

Last spring semester I was on a committee to rework our "requal" program and in that committee the name was changed to the chapter excellence program. We looked at several other campuses who had similiar greek communities to ours and created our own program that all chapters would have a fair chance to earn their rank. The basis of our chapter excellence program is:

Ritual- Pledge service, initiation, officer installation, collegiate to alumna ceremony, ritual review, alumni participation, and ritual equipment upkeep

Scholarship- Established scholarship plan, scholarship incentive programs, scholarship banquet, and monies devoted to improving scholarship

Community Service/ Philanthropy- Service hours, Philanthropic events attended, money donated

Leadership- International convention attendance, LEADERSHAPE attendance, officer tranistion program, chapter goals

Growth/Recruitment/Retention- New member plan, recruitment plans, recruitment functions, recruitment budget, programs geared toward new/current/senior members

Chapter Standards/ Membership Accountability- Standards board, code of standards, risk management, risk management programs and workshops, chapter meeting minutes,

Finances- properly prepared budget information

External Relations- Overall chapter participation, communication with alumni, alumni event participation, Listserv for alumni, communication with parents, Gamma Lambda website

Brotherhood/Sisterhood- chapter programs with outside presenters, activities recognition system, sisterhood events

Housing- established house rules

Each of the bolded headings above are given a points value between 5 and 6 points and the completion of each of the activites within that section determine what point value the chapter recieves. Then the points are added up and the chapters score out of 60 total points give the percentage, therefore creating chapter excellence determined on a percentage scale.

I am not positive because I am no longer in the position on the panhellenic chapter excellence committee but the goal in the beginning was to then deem chapters either gold, silver, bronze, etc. depending on their over percentage after the chapter excellence form is completed.

Open Houses

In order to recruit girls for Alpha Gam here at Longwood, we have various open houses throughout the year. The Continuing Open Bid Coordinator is in charge of planning these open houses. We hang up flyers all around campus to let non Greek girls know that we will be having a get together in our chapter room, and that we would love for them to come and stop by and meet all of our sisters. We always have fun music playing, snacks for them to munch on, and a few interactive games for us to play while we are getting to know one another. When the weather gets warm we usually have our open houses outside of the sorority dorm where we can grill out, play music, and socialize with the girls who come by. This helps us get to know some people before actual recruitment starts. What are some functions that your chapter puts on in order to help recruit for the following year? Let us know what you think about our open houses, or if you have any suggestions of different activities we could do! Thanks for your help!

Spring Weekend Booth

At Longwood every spring semester sometime in April a group on campus called Lancer Productions puts on a huge event with entertainment such as pretty big name artists, other groups on campus, and a ton of booths that organizations can 'rent' and do pretty much whatever they want with. There is also a chili cook off. In the past Gamma Lambda has done the chili cook off and it is such a good time just hanging out with sisters and goofing off, and of course trying to cook something. This year we are looking into also having a booth where we can sell something that will bring in money (without costing too much up front) so that we can donate more to our philanthropy this year. The only idea we have come up with is jewelry that we can make and will hopefully appeal to the women on campus. We were thinking about doing colors of other chapters on campus to appeal to those girls specifically. Hopefully this will be successful but it always hard to tell what people will really spend their money on. Any other ideas of feedback about this idea?

Scholarship

Along with philanthropy, scholarship always seems to be something on the top of our goals each year to improve on. After being VP of scholarship it is also something that I am particularly interested in. Overall I think Gamma Lambda does pretty well in the scholarship area. We regularly use our incentive programs such as a pledge class A's of the week race, scholarship sister of the month, and a team game that groups sisters with similar majors and earns points by completing different academic events. We also hold a very organized scholarship banquet each semester complete with prizes and certificates for all sisters. I think our most significant downfall though is trying to construct a scholarship improvement plan for those sisters who have not met the minimum GPA to be in good standing. Each semester the scholarship improvement plan is tweaked to try to be more beneficial for those using it but in the past semesters it seems the number of members using a plan is right around the same number each semester. This past semester there was a chapter on our campus who did not have a single member below their minimum GPA to be in good standing, I think that is an awesome goal to strive for. Any ideas on other incentive programs or ways to help out members struggling with grades?

Philanthropy

Just as every other Alpha Gam chapter philanthropy is something that Gamma Lambda is always focusing on. Coming up soon we have two major philanthropy events to help support JDRF. This Friday on campus we are hosting a powder puff football tournament and are recruiting teams to sign up and are donating all proceeds to JDRF. So far it is going pretty well but we are having a bit of a hard time getting as much participation as we were hoping for. Another philanthropy event we are participating in next weekend is JDRF Gala at the Jefferson in Richmond Virginia. Gamma Lambdas also volunteered at this same event last year and it was such an incredible time. The Gala raises so much money for JDRF and it is such a good time to give back and meet people in different situations. Through our local JDRF chapter we participate in other events such as walks also. Even though we do volunteer a lot we have been trying to find a way to raise money as well. That was our hope with powder puff but it doesn't seem like we are going to raise as much money as we were hoping. We are hoping to make this an annual event as long as we can increase participation. Any other good philanthropy event ideas?

Lip Sync- Chants

This week Longwood held Lipsync. It is an event that CPC (Panhel) puts on each semester for new members and each chapter performs a dance to a mix of songs. Before Lipsync starts all of the different sororities do different chants to get excited. Unfortunately our chapter does not know any chants so we can't ever participate. We know parts of a few different ones but we do not know any chants in their entirety. Any suggestions from Alpha Gams about chants that other chapters do?? Please help!.

Destination Unknown

A sisterhood event that we do here at Longwood is something called Destination Unknown. Our sisterhood chair plans a one night trip to a secret place that only she knows. The day we leave we meet in the chapter room and get a random list of things we might need for the weekend, the list is meant to be confusing so we have no clue where we are going. After we go back and pack we meet back in the chapter room later that day and then all leave together. After we get to the mystery destination we spend the night hanging with just sisters which brings us all closer together and is always a really good time. In the past we have done things like canoeing down the James river and camping, a trip to Virginia Beach and stayed in cabins, and lots of other outdoor relaxing destinaions! This is a really good sisterhood event and is a great time to just spend time with your sisters and make tons of memories.

Any ideas for other sisterhood events, or what do you think about this idea??