"Senioritis" (DZ power point)
 

I don't come to this board often, so you may have discovered this already , but in case you haven't:

I was exploring the Delta Zeta national website (always interesting to see how NPC groups present themselves!). I stumbled into the "collegiate" area. There is a Power Point presentation, given at a regional (?) workshop, called Senioritis. It has many *excellent* ideas for keeping seniors interested and involved in their chapters.

I know we're focused on fall recruitment right now, but spring term will be here before we know it. This presentation is a good one for chapter leaders to bookmark or download. (Just be sure to give appropriate credit when you use it!)

HTH!

AGDAlum
....I wish we'd had such helpful leadership tools when we were undergraduates!

Senioritis is a fabulous presentation. I saw it during our Recruitment Conference in Dallas this past February. I highly recommend it.

that is a great presentation!!! way to go dz!!!

Nice PP! I would add to that that Pi Beta Phi has done research as to why juniors/ seniors/ recent grads don't stay involved. The ideas expressed in this presentation are right on the money. We have just rolled out our new four-year member program, Leading with Values... a major componant is the senior transition program. It can be seen on www.pibetaphi.org (on the public side). I think we are all recognizing the same things.

While it's good to be able to see the PP online, I bet it was even more powerful in person!

What a thoughtfull and introspective insight this is!

I passed it on to my Chapter or trying to!:)

Excellent!

wow!!! that is great too!!! i really like how you give examples of ways to present these topics. way to go pi phi!!!

Thanks for the link, Karen. The "Leading With Values" program looks great!

I'm sure the open access was so that undergrads and alumnae can easily get to it -- that it's also available to anyone else may be unintentional, but generous!

Wow, those are both great programs! I will have to pass them along to my chapter.

Gamma Phi is unveiling a similar program, I learned about it at our spring RLC. I cannot for the life of me remember the working name, perhaps SmartBlondeGPhB will know, but it looks really neat. It's basically redoing our new member education and providing more "lifetime" education, especially towards senior year. We were asked to suggest names for it at RLC but I was tired and snarky so I just stole stuff from a bunch of fraternities or tried to make rhyming names.

I'd be interested to see what Gamma Phi is planning. Change can be difficult but it's also exciting.

I appreciated being able to see DZ's powerpoint (and passed the information along to some of my fellow officers). The more we, as sorority women work together, the more likely it will be that our daughters and granddaughters can enjoy being in a GLO.

It was called the Complete Sister program. As far as I know, that's still the name.

I don't know much about it but the chapter at the UW (Washington) beta tested it last fall. I think it's still in the testing phase for this year as well.

i totally agree!!! plus, if everyone is all doing their own seperate research to come up with similiar results....wouldn't it just be easier to share the research with one another....and then tweak it to your individual needs???

my personal favorite from both programs is that they start making changes to programming for seniors. i would love to have had something like that when i was in school, however, since we had sophomore deferment, i think it wouldn't really be beneficial to the chapter. maybe if it were just the second semester!

While I think the idea of trying to prevent burnout w/ seniors is good, sometimes I wonder if it isn't a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy...I mean if you assume the seniors will be "burnt out" won't there be some people who use that as an excuse? Not only that, I think that it just reinforces the stereotype of rushing and pledging first semester freshman year. For many chapters junior and even senior pledges are common.

In our alum panhel meetings, we've discussed fraternity education and trying to get seniors to stay involved. The consensus was that it would be better to communicate to newly graduated women who have graduated and gotten somewhat settled, rather than the seniors who are trying to pass their last classes, deal with internships, get jobs and possibly find first apartments and such before the school year is out. Once you are out of school and find that the "real world" really isn't that thrilling, you're more likely to want to get involved.

Part of the biggest issue is that too many young women do not view their fraternity membership as a lifetime experience. Whether they pledge as a freshmen or a senior, within 5 years the majority are not involved, nor do they see value in being involved. "Senioritis" is a symptom of a much larger problem. What Pi Phi is trying to do (and I borrow the Girl Scout term) is bridging the gap... by allowing our seniors to participate in activities that have meaning to them and introducing them to the value of alumnae connections, it is hoped that they will want to be members of the alumnae panhellenic. Waiting until they have graduated is too late.... we've lost them to the minutiae of chapter "requirements". Will this work? We hope so, but truly won't know for some time. Doing something is better than doing nothing....