Delta's Stories of Triumph (DST in the News)

[CrimsonTide4]

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/13/Hi...give_tea.shtml

Student, NFL give teacher honor

A Tampa elementary school teacher wins $500 and a Pro Bowl trip after an ex-student nominates her in 200 words.


With L'Asia, that meant introducing her to successful, inspiring women at Delta Sigma Theta sorority events. It meant trashing school papers she thought weren't the girl's best and making her write them over.

Stone said she's fond of all her students, but particularly those who act out. L'Asia fit that category, until Stone took the time to teach her other ways to express her anger, the girl said.


Excerpt from L'Asia's letter:
(What) "I think I will remember is how I wouldn't be where I am if it was not for my 5th grade teacher Miss Stone. I live in the projects and before Miss Stone I never even considered college. That is just not what people in my neighborhood do. Miss Stone has encouraged me to do well in school. In fact, she is kind of like a second mom. She makes deals with me if I can earn certain grades. Therefore, I try hard. I really don't want to disappoint her. So I think I will remember her words of wisdom. I think I will remember how she told me I can be the first person in my family to get a college degree. ... I will remember how she took an interest in me. I will remember that Miss Stone is the best thing that has happened in my life."

CONGRATULATIONS and KUDOS, SOROR MICHELLE!

[ladygreek]

Amy was initiated by Alpha Chapter.

Amy S. Hilliard is the founder, president and CEO of The ComfortCake Company LLC, makers of "pound cake so good it feels like a hug."In 2001, the former senior marketing executive with Gillette, Pillsbury and L'Oreal stepped into the legacy of her grandfather, an executive chef, to launch ComfortCake® from her own pound cake recipe with a small but dedicated team.

ComfortCake's first customer was United Airlines, who ordered 500,000 slices. Current customers include the Chicago Public Schools, Jewel Stores, Walgreen's (with 2000 stores nationally), and Compass. Now a national trademark, ComfortCake® has been featured on The Food Network's "Recipe for Success", and the cakes are available through the company's website, www.comfortcake.com.

The product line consists of frozen batters, loaf cakes, slices, bundt cakes and Sugarless Sweetness® No-Sugar Added cakes, launched in honor of Amy's parents who are diabetic, and made with an exclusive, trade secret sugar replacement formula.

A portion of the profits from Sugarless Sweetness® products will be donated to the American Diabetes Association.

After just two years in business, The ComfortCake Company was selected as the 2003 Emerging Minority Enterprise of the Year by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Ms. Hilliard is the first African-American elected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of the Specialty Food Trade, and sits on both the African-American Advisory Board of PepsiCo and the Premier Auto Group's Diversity Council. Additionally, she is a member of the Rainbow/Push International Trade Bureau and a board member of the Women's Business Development Center in Chicago.

Ms. Hilliard owns The Hilliard Group, a consulting firm, and was formerly an adjunct professor of marketing at DePaul University. The recipient of numerous business and civic awards, Ms. Hilliard has been profiled in many national publications, and is featured in the ESSENCE hardcover book, Making It Happen.

Ms. Hilliard has lectured at Harvard, The University of Chicago, Northwestern, Duke and UCLA and speaks worldwide on marketing, entrepreneurship and personal development. Excerpts from her first book, TAP INTO YOUR JUICE-Find Your Gifts, Lose Your Fears, and Build Your Dreams,will be released shortly.

A Detroit native, Ms. Hilliard graduated with honors from both Howard University and the Harvard Business School. She is the proud mother of two teenagers, Angelica Jones, who wrote the company slogan and Nicholas Jones, the chief taste tester since day one.

[Wonderful1908]

Saw this sistegreeks hope is okay to post.

Despite hurdles, New Orleans students taking opportunities

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- By tradition, every Friday the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta circle around a campus flagpole and join hands to pray and sing, celebrating their closest friendships at Dillard University.

This semester, the ritual will have to take place outside the downtown Hilton Hotel, their beloved school's home through at least July, where the conference rooms are doubling as lecture halls.

The Dillard campus suffered perhaps the worst damage of the half-dozen or so major New Orleans colleges hit by Hurricane Katrina, and it is the only one not reopening on its own grounds this month.

But all the New Orleans colleges face the same challenge: preserving the spirit and essence of their institutions while their battered buildings and finances are rebuilt.

The hurdles are enormous. The combined damage to the college campuses may approach $1 billion. They have laid off hundreds of faculty and cut dozens of programs and sports teams. At a recent faculty and staff meeting, Loyola University's president implored tenured faculty, who were not laid off, to consider retiring. The public Southern University at New Orleans has had three


chancellors since June.

Still, the return of students to New Orleans in recent days -- in greater numbers than expected at some schools -- seemed to inject everyone with a dose of optimism. Loyola and Dillard began classes last week; Xavier and Tulane universities start Tuesday, as does Southern, where the first two weeks of classes will be held in a local charter school.

"Everything happens for a reason, and Katrina was a horrible thing, but I think the school is going to be better for it," said Ashley Bell, a Dillard junior.

Her sorority sister, Joy Calloway, said the experience of temporarily attending other, more impersonal colleges made Dillard students appreciate their own.

"The students who came back are the students who really love Dillard and want to be a part of it," Calloway said.

The best-case scenario is that the New Orleans colleges will emerge stronger, with new buildings and sharper missions. They will cooperate more, and attract a crop of civic-minded students drawn to New Orleans to participate in the city's rebuilding.

The rebuilding effort offers them a unique laboratory for courses ranging from sociology to architecture to engineering. Tulane is instituting a public service requirement, and Dillard, which already required students to perform 120 hours of community service, will now require each to complete some kind of Katrina-related academic project.

Katrina "almost destroyed Tulane University," President Scott Cowen told freshmen and their parents at the university's convocation Thursday, but now, "We have the opportunity of a lifetime ahead of us."

About 88 percent of Tulane's 12,500 students before the storm returned. Xavier says about 3,100 reregistered -- roughly three-quarters the previous figure but higher than the school expected. Dillard, with 1,100 students back, is about half its former size.

The University of New Orleans -- a public school attracting mostly local students -- is aiming for 12,500, compared to 17,000 before the storm.

"For most colleges and universities, tuition is the largest share of revenue," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. "If you're getting 80 percent of your revenue from tuition and you lose half your students, you're facing enormous difficulties."

For now, housing is a challenge, even with fewer students. Tulane has rented a cruise ship. Off-campus housing in the neighborhood around Dillard may be scarce for years, and if the college reopens next fall it will be down at least six dorms _ three that burned during the flood and three unusable because of water damage. At Xavier, President Norman Francis says hundreds more have registered than he has beds for, and he isn't sure where they'll live.

Xavier's damage is estimated at $35 million (money from FEMA could eventually cut Xavier's bill to $12 million). Francis, president here for 38 years, announced even before he saw the damage that Xavier must and would return.

The country's only historically black, Roman Catholic college, Xavier sends more black students to medical school than any other college, and alumni account for nearly one-quarter of all black pharmacists in the United States.

"We have moved mountains to be where we are," Francis said.

A recent campus tour revealed the scope and expense of reconstruction at Xavier. A quarter-million-dollar electron microscope lay ruined in a first-floor science room. Gone are the theater seats and Internet connections of the main lecture hall of the pharmacy school, replaced for now by high-school style desks.

But 95 percent of the students in the highly competitive pharmacy program will be back.

Xavier is "not coming back just to recover," Francis said. "We're coming back to do better."

Some fear such predictions are wishful thinking, given the scope of budget cuts. Xavier laid off more than one-third of its faculty, though it has rehired some. Even relatively wealthy Tulane, with an $800 million endowment, cut more than 200 faculty (most in the medical school) and hundreds of staff.

Eliminating graduate programs will let faculty focus more on undergraduate teaching, Cowen said. And by eliminating adjunct faculty, colleges may indeed give students more exposure to full-time professors. Between the cuts and makeup courses, however, those full-timers may be too busy to pay students much personal attention.

Weakened individually, the New Orleans colleges could find strength in each other. Many credit Tulane -- traditionally viewed as more concerned with national research prestige than community development -- with reaching out aggressively, offering classrooms and other facilities to help the other colleges.

They also could benefit from the national attention on New Orleans, which may help explain why Tulane's applications are up 15 percent. And there are stronger ties to other universities; Brown and Princeton, for instance, provided extensive aid to Dillard, and are working on an exchange program.

Inevitably, the New Orleans colleges will be different. But their supporters insist they can be strong again -- and that they are poised to take advantage of the unique opportunities created by the hurricane.

"Today we think about the state-of-the-art climbing wall and about the facilities that are so much a part of a modern university," said Brown President Ruth Simmons, a Dillard alumna. "It's true that many of those things we take for granted, they will not have. But that is not to suggest that learning won't take place in a powerful way."

Touring Dillard's campus for the first time since the storm Friday, junior Ciara Jeffrey shook her head at the state of the campus, even four months into the repairs.

The elegant buildings still gleamed white, and all the pillars of the "Avenue of Oaks" remained. But the lawns were a muddy mess, and the buildings shells of what she remembered. In what she recalled as a vibrant student union, she stared through the gutted walls of what resembled a dark, unfinished basement.

"There has been a major crisis," she said. But she insisted Dillard was still there, and recognizable.

"It's still the spirit," she said. "It's still the campus."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[mccoyred]

Originally posted by jitterbug13
There is no mention in the story that she is a soror. I just happened to ask my mom if she knows her and she said that Dr. Deas was one of her big sisters when she was pledging!

http://www.charleston.net/stories/?n...tion=hiprofile

I heard this story and just KNEW that she was a Soror! Thanks for verification.

[sweete81]

I was just about to post the same story! I guess great minds think alike!

News

P.S. I really wish you could see the pics, because they really capture the essence of the story.

[CrimsonTide4]

Originally posted by sweete81
I was just about to post the same story! I guess great minds think alike!

News

P.S. I really wish you could see the pics, because they really capture the essence of the story.

THanks Wonderful and Sweete81. I went looking for the article to see the pics but the article I found on Forbes.com did not show any pics. What's the link you are looking at Sweete81?

NEVER MIND I found it courtesy of CNN.com

[jitterbug13]

LAS VEGAS - There may be more glitz for Miss America this year, but there's less dough.

After losing its network television contract, moving to Las Vegas in search of a new glamorous look and turning to former winners for financial help, the Miss America Organization has reduced the amount of scholarship money it awards its winners.

Miss America 2006 will receive a crown Saturday night but $20,000 less for school than her predecessor. And the total amount of scholarship prize money for the 52 contestants will drop this year by about 44 percent to $292,500. For the past four years, the pageant handed out about $528,500 at the national level through awards given to Miss America, the runners-up and the winners of other prizes for community service, talent and swimsuit, according to pageant officials.

"In the process of putting together our budget, we realized we needed to invest in rebranding and redistribute the funding," said Art McMaster, the CEO of the Atlantic City, N.J.-based Miss America Organization.

The scholarship reductions are one of several recent moves McMaster has made in an attempt to keep the 85-year-old pageant afloat. The organization lost $1.7 million in 2004, due largely to a drop in television revenue from ABC, which later jettisoned the pageant from its lineup.

Cable outlet Country Music Television picked up Miss America, but the broadcast rights are believed to be far less than before.

McMaster cited the financial troubles in explaining his decision to move the pageant from Atlantic City to Las Vegas, a city with less expensive production costs and a built-in media buzz.

This fall, the pageant turned to former winners for help, asking them to underwrite in part what since 2000 had been a $50,000 scholarship for the winner. This year that scholarship is $30,000.

"It's too bad that the young lady won't be able to benefit as much as we did," said Miss America 2004 Ericka Dunlap, who plans to use her scholarship for law school and promotion of an upcoming country music album.

The Miss America Organization bills itself as the world's leading provider of scholarships to young women. Along with a network of state, county and city pageants, it says it makes $45 million in scholarship aid available annually.

With less television revenue flowing in, McMaster said the not-for-profit organization has had to start focusing on fundraising.

At the pageant's first preliminary competition Tuesday at the Aladdin Resort & Casino, vendors sold Miss America T-shirts and baby pajamas before the show.

Also, the lobby was scented with perfume that will be sold for $49.95 a bottle at national and local pageants, with a certain percentage of the profits going to the Miss America Organization.

[CrimsonTide4]

Sorors, Delta women are DEFINITELY in places of power!

The cover story of the February '06 issue of BLACK ENTERPRISE magazine features black women in top corporate positions throughout America. Renetta McCann (pictured on the cover), CEO of The Americas Starcom MediaVest, was made in Theta Alpha Chapter (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL). To read more about her, go to http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biog...businessMakers

[Ms Public Service]

By APRIL DAVIS, Progress Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 9:44 AM EST





Members of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. paid tribute Sunday to the 22 young collegiate women, who nearly a century ago, began a legacy to improve the quality of life for humankind through public service.

Members of the Thomson Alumnae Chapter hosted a Founder's Day celebration at Springfield Baptist Church surrounded by guests.

“We are thankful for our visiting sorors, representatives of other Greek letter organizations, friends and supporters who came to celebrate Founder's Day with us,” said Georgia Hobbs, president of the Thomson Alumnae Chapter.

“We are also thankful to Springfield Baptist Church, which has been our home base since chartered.”

The program offered a look to the past through traditional ceremonies and prayer as well as a look into future obligations as guest speaker Soror Louise A. Rice, the 23rd national president of Delta Sigma Theta, spoke of the organization's most recent contributions and the strides ahead.

“In 1913, our courageous founders stepped out of the box with a vision and a mission to make a significant difference in promoting social and racial betterment through public service,” she said.

Embodying the group's theme, “One mission, one sisterhood - Empowering communities through committed service,” Rice spoke of how a recent visit to hurricane stricken areas put a new task before the organization.

“Out of more than 200 Delta sorors in New Orleans,” Rice said, “there were only 55 Delta alumnae left after Hurricane Katrina.”

In the spirit of sisterhood, however, more than 200 sorors from around the country joined these women in their own Founder's Day celebration.

Rice said for two and a half hours, she toured the city with local officials, three of whom were Deltas.

“I was shocked at the devastation,” she said. “It was nothing but devastation for miles and miles.”

Rice said these tragic events attest to the importance of establishing visions.

“It's important that we provide for the welfare of all our citizens without regard to economic status, race or political affiliation,” she said.

“How many people have perished because there was no vision? We need a vision that includes everyone.”

Rice said the organization immediately rose to the challenge following these events with the establishment of the Delta Hurricane Katrina Relief Task Force, which serves as an effective response to not only assist sorors, but all who were affected.

“We're committed and here for the long haul,” she said. “Our vision is relief, and I'm excited to announce we have exceeded $1 million in contributions toward this effort.”

The spirit of the Delta Sigma Theta sisterhood has grown since its inception, reaching more than 200,000 members and 900 chapters throughout the country and abroad.

“Ever cognizant of the 93 years this organization has seen and the differences we continue to make in each of our communities, we indeed have a legacy to celebrate,” Rice said. “The best time to reach out to someone is now, and the best person to lend a hand is you. Remember, doing good isn't always acceptable, but doing good is always accepted,” she said.


http://www.mcduffieprogress.com/arti...ews/news03.txt

[CrimsonTide4]

Debut of Delta Sigma Theta debutante ball

pic is large, click here to see it

It was a big night: Their shining moment to take the first step toward womanhood in front of the entire community. No one wanted to mess up. "We were nervous that we were going to tumble down those steps and fall in those long dresses," said Lutricia Wingate Boulware, third from left above.

On April 17, 1964, at the Grady Cole Center on North Kings Drive, 20 high school seniors participated in the first Delta Sigma Theta Sorority debutante ball in Charlotte.

"To be black in Charlotte and be presented as a debutante was very, very special," Boulware said. "You pick up the paper in those days and who did you see: white debutantes. So why not do it for us because we deserve those equal rights, too?"

[GeekyPenguin]

http://www.startribune.com/389/story/225099.html

[ladygreek]

Originally posted by GeekyPenguin
http://www.startribune.com/389/story/225099.html

Awww, you beat me to it - LOL.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally posted by ladygreek
Awww, you beat me to it - LOL.

That's just a listing of notable Deltas - if you pick up an actual copy of the paper, there's a HUGE article on black Greek life, focusing on Delta Sigma Theta.

I thought of you when I saw it!

[ladygreek]

Originally posted by GeekyPenguin
That's just a listing of notable Deltas - if you pick up an actual copy of the paper, there's a HUGE article on black Greek life, focusing on Delta Sigma Theta.

I thought of you when I saw it!

I don't know if you have to be subscriber or not, but if you go to http://www.startribune.com/389/story/225094.html you can see the full article--"A Lifelong Pledge." There is a picture of my chapter taken at our Founders Day.

The reporter was really impressed by what she saw and heard. And of course it didn't hurt that we have a coouple of sorors who are also reporters for the paper.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally posted by ladygreek
I don't know if you have to be subscriber or not, but if you go to http://www.startribune.com/389/story/225094.html you can see the full article--"A Lifelong Pledge." There is a picture of my chapter taken at our Founders Day.

The reporter was really impressed by what she saw and heard. And of course it didn't hurt that we have a coouple of sorors who are also reporters for the paper.

I tried to find it and couldn't - I saw the article in the paper when I read it at Panera today, I only get the Sunday edition because I'm broke.

I thought it was a really impressive article.