D. Reid Weedon, Jr. 41 FSILG Alumni/ae Relations Award FSILG: Phi Delta Theta Size of living FSILG alumni population: 643 FSILG Student Contact person: Eric Beecher Student Contact s FSILG Leadership Role: Alumni Chairman Student Contact s Address: 97 Bay State Road, Boston, MA. 02215 Student Contact s Phone: (585) 329-5012 Student Contact s Email: beechman@mit.edu FSILG Alumni/ae Relations Chair Name and Email: Eric Beecher, beechman@mit.edu FSILG President Name and Email: John Cromwell, j_crom@mit.edu FSILG House Corporation President Name and Email (if any): Stan Wulf, sawulf@enters.com FSILG Chapter Advisor Name and Email (if any): Dr. Hauke Kite-Powell, hauke@alum.mit.edu 1
ALUMNI/AE OUTREACH (A chapter with a strong Alumni/ae program should include practices in most if not all of these areas): 1. Please describe your major annual alumni event(s) (e.g. Alumni weekend, Founders Day, reunions). Our largest annual event is our alumni weekend. This year the alumni weekend will be held on April 3 rd -5 th. We are expecting our largest turnout to date. We modified last year s popular events and added the barbeque on Friday night to produce the following schedule: Friday, April 3rd 7:00PM - Barbeque at the house Grilled by the brothers in our own back yard. Should provide a great opportunity for alumni and brothers to meet each other and socialize while the food is being cooked. The location helps to increase current brother turnout and gives alumni a chance to see the house and go on tours. Informal event also allows for flexible arrival times for alumni just coming into town. 9:00PM - Open Bar at Cornwall's English Pub The open bar helps to boost participation and cater to the alumni. Saturday, April 4th 2:00PM - Softball on MIT's turf field Teams are composed of both alumni and current brothers. The number of fielding positions will be changed to make sure that everyone can participate, including the older alumni. 5:00PM - Alumni Storytelling at the house Last year we compiled a history of the house using stories from alumni. This year that history was further expanded. The storytelling event will begin with brothers sharing their own experiences regarding talented brothers, house traditions, notorious officers, and house improvements. 7:00PM - Formal Dinner at the house We expect our peak turnout for the weekend at our formal dinner. This event is great for alumni of all ages and for those with families. It provides an extended period of time in which the alumni can talk with the current brothers in small groups for personal interaction. Sunday, April 5th noon - Lunch at Hong Kong Cafe This is a tribute to the house tradition started in the 90s in which brothers head to a restaurant we call Tastys for lunch on Sunday afternoon. Attendance at alumni weekend has been steadily increasing for the past two years. In 07 we started revamping our alumni program and 31 alumni showed up over the course of the weekend. Last year we showed an improvement on that number, with roughly 35 in attendance. This year we expect to continue that trend. 48 Alumni have already confirmed the fact that they will be attending. This will mark the third year in a row in which we have seen record setting levels of attendance for our alumni weekend. At the start of the year I spent a long time setting goals with my alumni chairman predecessor. We set what we thought was an overambitious and almost unachievable goal of 50 alumni. Now, a few months later, we are almost there. In order to achieve this level of attendance we followed an advertising campaign similar to last year. I kept in contact with the alumni by sending out monthly chapter updates via email. Then I 2
sent out a save the date email in December. From the start of February until now I ve sent out emails to the alumni roughly every other week, which included new announcements and a snowball list to build excitement. Additionally, we held a telethon to call all the alumni and mailed them invitations. Something new we added this year was encouraging particularly involved alumni to contact their own classmates. I ll elaborate on these methods in response to question 8 below. 2. Please describe other chapter events which alumni/ae were invited and participated (e.g. initiation, community service, informal alumni dinners, athletic events, faculty dinners, parents dinners, and Campus Preview Weekend). Golden Legion Ceremony The golden legion award is given to our alumni of 50 years. Here is an alumnus account of the event: In June 2008, several of us went to Boston and to 97 Bay State to celebrate our 50th class reunion. While making it to 50 is remarkable, our attendance was incredible. We had 15 people in our pledge class. Sadly, 3 have passed on, but out of the remaining 12, 11 attended the reunion. What a turn-out. Most of us stayed at the Hyatt Regency on campus, and frankly had a ball reliving our 50 years. We went to the House, and had a reunion in the library. We had a great time reminiscing. Some of the younger Brothers held a ceremony for us to receive our Golden Legion Emblems. What a nice time. -Chris Gimre 58 We plan on holding the event again this year and making it an annual tradition. IM sports Especially basketball and soccer, but Frisbee and hockey as well. We ve had roughly 10 alumni play with us so far this year. Rush A few alumni came back to help with cooking for the brothers and also to pass on their knowledge to the inexperienced sophomores. Initiation We invite 6 alumni back to the house every year to take part in initiation. Holiday party At least a couple alumni came to the house for our annual Christmas party to welcome the pledges back following one of their trips. Recruiting Many alumni come back to Boston for career fairs, tech fair, Battlecode, etc. They usually stop by the house and often collect resumes from interested brothers. Track and field alumni meet Our house used to have a strong track presence and 6 alumni came back for the meet this IAP. They competed against current brothers on the team and a few of them stayed at the house. Traveling Several alumni (on the order of 10-20 alumni and 20-30 visits) have traveled through Boston this past year on business or just to reminisce. Usually those brothers stop by the house for dinner and a tour. There are also big/little brother family lines within the house and an alumni coming into town provides the occasion to have an extended family dinner. 3. Please describe your chapter s interaction with your House Corporation. 4. Please describe your chapter s interaction with your Alumni Advisors. The housing corporation for Phi Delta Theta is rather small and consists of four or five members. The president of the housing corporation is Stan Wulf 65 and the current chapter 3
adviser is Hauke Kite-Powell 84. The role that these two play is rather small as they believe in a hands off mentality. They believe that the chapter should be self-sufficient and knowledge should be passed from the older classes to the younger classes. The advantages are that active brothers have the responsibility of operating the chapter on their own. This responsibility is very valuable and forces members to learn with a much quicker learning curve, better preparing them for life after graduation. Because of this mentality, there is very little interaction between the active house with the advisor or housing corporation. Higher officers are the only members who have constant interaction with these positions. While this attitude is maintained on most occasions, they aid us on necessary occasions. They help with major renovations to the house which exceed the annual budget. They also fulfill the necessary roles with national headquarters and the MIT administration. Outside of these, they leave the officers of the chapter with the responsibility of making sure that the chapter runs well. In an effort to improve our communication with our alumni advisor we have added him to our mailing list for all in-house emails. That way he can respond to major issues and offer his advice where he sees fit. This also helps us to correct any large problems before they have gotten out of hand. Thus far Hauke has only contributed to a couple emails with numerous responses regarding overall house attitude toward officers. Additionally, we are adding four new positions to the chapter advisor board in order to aid the executive officers within the house. An advisor will be added for the president/vice president positions, the house manager, steward, and risk manager. The board should be expanded sometime this year and then we ll leave it up to the advisors to find a means for consistent communication which suits them best. 5. Please describe how you communicate chapter news to alumni/ae. If you have a newsletter, how often is it distributed? How is your newsletter distributed (mail, email, website)? Include a pointer to electronic copies of your newsletter(s) (since June 2008). Two modes of communication are used to inform alumni about chapter news. The first is our alumni newsletter, The Mass Gamma Messenger, and the second is a series of update emails. The newsletter is sent out biannually and mailed individually to all of our alumni; once in the fall and again in the spring. Stuart Howe visits the alumni relations chairman once per semester with instructions on how to submit articles and photos. After this meeting, the alumni relations chair chooses topics to include in the newsletter and chooses 5-6 people from the house to write them. The possible topics that are involved are typically included in the newsletter follows: Successful alumni New-found alumni involvement: Alumni initiatives Stories from older alumni Presidential state of the chapter Community service Rush House improvements GRA insights Article from Stan Wulf Brothers traveling abroad The two most recent newsletters from the spring and fall of 2008 are linked below. The images are stored in my Public Athena directory (in case the links don t work) at web.mit.edu/beechman/public. http://web.mit.edu/beechman/public/spring2008newsletter.jpg http://web.mit.edu/beechman/public/fall2008newsletter.jpg 4
In order to communicate with the alumni between newsletters I have been sending out chapter update emails since the fall. These updates started out on a monthly basis and then increased in frequency from February leading up to alumni weekend. In addition to the topics mentioned above for the newsletter, the updates might also address the following: House traditions Leadership roles Relations with campus Positions on campus National relations Awards Phikeia (pledge) program House values Brothers who rock at life The alumni have received the updates extremely positively. Here are a few sample responses from updates sent out this year: Thanks, Eric. A nice update. Wishing the Brothers all the best for the upcoming Rush! Sorry I can t be at the Clambake. -Bob Johnson 63 Great job dude these little updates r solid good luck with everything next year -Sam Berberian 07 Dear Eric, Brother Cromwell set a huge standard for alumni relations. You have big shoes to fill, but the first step is recognizing that, and your excellent message below tells me you really get it, too and it says worlds about why I m so proud of the chapter that is our legacy, as it is managed now by your peers. I am still young, and I still watch carefully what you all do, so please know I am second to none in my admiration of the current group, and proud to be a Mass Gamma Phi. Please grow on what Brother Cromwell did. -Bob Sutton 73 6. Please describe how you use your chapter s Web site to communicate with alumni/ae. Include a screenshot as an attachment to your application or include a web address for review. Our website has two main features which are useful for alumni. The news page keeps alumni updated on current events. The page is updated when we have something new going on at the house, such as rush, community service projects, elections, and any alumni events. Currently it contains the schedule and registration information for alumni weekend. A screenshot of the news page is shown below and can be seen at http://massgammaphidelts.org/brothers.html if you click on the news tab in the top right hand corner of the page. 5
The second feature is the brother biographies page. Alumni can click on an individual picture from the current composite and a quick auto-biography pops up with information about each brother. This can be found by clicking on the brothers tab at the top of the screen using the same link as above. A screenshot is shown below. We are also featuring one of our alumni on our rush page, which can be located by clicking on the rush tab in the top left of the aforementioned website. We hope to expand this page to include an alumnus from each decade to show a unique perspective on why someone might want to pledge Phi Delta Theta. 7. Please describe how you engage alumni/ae as mentors, career advisors and/or for networking. We are currently in the process of launching an alumni mentoring program. At the end of last year we started brainstorming methods for increasing alumni involvement within the house. Our new mentorship program is a result of that initiative. Within a few weeks we will be sending out a survey to local alumni (within driving distance of Boston) in order to gauge interest in the program. The link to the survey is 6
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ms_2bg8lghce0jatf3_2f0o_2bna_3d_3d and here is a screenshot of it: Alumni can contribute to the program in many ways. We are looking for one on one mentorship over the phone or email, internship and job opportunities, course or industry specific advice, or career related talks at the house. Once we have established a smaller scale local version of the program we plan on extending it to cover all of the alumni. 8. Please describe any other programs, events or outreach not described above (i.e. Holiday Cards, Relational Phonathons, and email listservs). This year we held our third annual phone-a-thon to call the alumni and invite them to alumni weekend. Each brother was assigned 8 or 9 alumni to call. In addition to inviting them to alumni weekend, we also asked for stories to add to the growing house collection. The phone-a-thon was held within the house with an excellent turnout. Current brothers were also responsible for addressing envelopes to their alumni for a mass mailed paper invitation. The phone-a-thon was started two years ago and has become an annual event. Even if the alumni aren t interested in coming to the weekend, they usually enjoy receiving calls from the brothers and hearing about the current state of the house. We have also asked particularly involved alumni to keep in touch with their classmates and to encourage them to come to alumni weekend. The overall goal is to have an era captain every 5 years to maintain contact with alumni who lived in the house with them. Right now we have a pilot program in place with 2 alumni as era captains. I ve maintained email correspondence with these captains and samples of their responses are below. 7
Eric, How ya doin'? I've been beating these old Phis about the head. How's plans for Alumni Weekend. - Frank Modica 88 Thanks for setting this up. I'll be there for parts of it. I also posted this to the Yahoo group I have for the classes of 73-79. -Michael Golan 76 Last year we also set in place plans to help create a local Boston alumni club, similar to those which can be found all over the country. We are proud to say that the club has been established and held a few meetings within the past year. Our chapter was responsible for working closely with the leader of the club, helping to identify interested local alumni from our chapter, and to provide a gathering place for the initial meetings. Currently the chapter is making plans to connect with this recently formed alumni club. We started planning a Founder s Day formal dinner celebration to bring the alumni and current brothers together. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a convenient date for both groups on such short notice so the plans have been pushed to next year and a date is already being set. 9. How do you develop, improve, setup and/or pass on your program from year to year? In addition to the many changes started by my alumni chairman predecessor, John Cromwell, he also created an electronic bible to be passed on from one officer to the next. John filled the bible with all the materials he used as alumni chairman. The most helpful items were spreadsheet templates which I myself could use, the list of event ideas for alumni weekend, and his communications with the alumni through mail and email. I ve updated the informational spreadsheets so that they cover the last two years. The original bible was just a collection of documents so I ve organized it into 5 main areas: alumni weekend, newsletters, the mentorship program, general use documents (budgets, information request forms), and goals for the program. I ve devoted the most time to the goals section of the bible because I think it is the most important for continuing growth within the program. John collected a vast amount of new ideas by talking to brothers, seeing what other fraternities have done on campus, and by forming a committee to revamp the program. Those ideas for new initiatives were translated into SMART goals so we could measure our progress toward improving the alumni relations program. I ve added new goals as ideas were conceived, kept track of the goals we ve met, and updated others when we tried something which didn t work. 8