In the early 1930s, Phi Psi changed the name of our fraternity education from "pledge education" to "fraternity education." This reflected the prevailing thought in the interfraternity world, that fraternity education should be for all members.
Most GLOs have similar pledge (or AM) education programs. There have been many decades of development, and many decades of interfraternal cooperation. I own pledge manuals for many national fraternities, and there was a time when more than half of the content was absolutely identicle. About 30 years ago, the manuals began to become more specialized to their respective organizations.
Two years ago, Phi Psi changed all references back to "pledge education" and added new references to total member development, in anticipation of the launch of our
Men of Excellence program. This reflects the current trend to tailor fraternity education to the needs of the members.
Pledges (or AMs) have different needs than a senior, who served two years as a chapter officer. The goals, of these new continuing education programs, are ambitious.
Many national fraternities have launched such programs, and most have failed. Phi Kappa Psi never launched our first such program. We knew that there were major problems and held back. We watched Sig Ep and Beta succeed, and others crash and burn.
What did we learn from those who failed? Keep in mind that Phi Kappa Psi is one of those who failed, we just didn't do it publicly, so this is not meant as a swipe at others. Of the programs that have failed, we noticed that the implementation was too ambitious. These fraternities took a heavy handed approach, and sometimes required that everyone in a chapter, and perhaps that all chapters must participate. This is in contrast to Sig Ep, who did not mandate that all of their chapters become Ballanced Men chapters. Phi Psi is making adoption of our program optional. Of those chapters that do adopt it, a majority, but not all, of the active members must participate. A chapter may mandate that all of its members participate.
We entrusted a Phi Psi, who is a professional greek life director, at an old greek system in a prestigous university, with the development of our new program. A beta version was introduced to a handful of chapters in the Fall of 2002. Some of the goals of our
Men of Excellence program include; reinforcement of our core values (occupy the actives with meaningful behavior, before they fill an activities vacuum with undesirable behavior), renewed relevance of the chapter to older actives (i.e. end "senior burnout"), and produce better alumni.
We did a full scale launch this past Summer, and we have our chapter chaplains oversee the program. So far, the chapters who have adopted this program, love it. As the program becomes adopted by more, and more chapters, our national culture will have this program at its core.