Faculty Recs Question

[clarinette]

Hello all! I just saw on SAI's Twitter that collegiate chapters aren't supposed to ask for faculty recommendations from potential MITs. I don't want to debate whether we should or not. I'm just curious if anyone knows why this was put in place.

[unarose]

I do know we had to have them for the petition packet to become a collegiate chapter, but I don't believe that was made a requirement for new MITs. Maybe it's one of those things that has (aside from petitioning groups) been a chapter-to-chapter decision?

I got my favorite professor (who actually passed away before we were installed as a chapter) to write my recommendation for the petitioning group, and then since we had to put them in order and stuff and I had all the member pages and letters, I saw the letter he wrote. He was a PMA since college and in it he mentioned that his wife had been a SAI in college as well. She actually taught as an adjunct one semester, if I remember correctly.

As for why it was put in place…it seems there is emphasis being put on all chapters doing MIT qualifications in a very uniform (nationally mandated) way, and the requirement of rec letters by some chapters could potentially be seen as a hindrance to that. There's also not supposed to be any sort of application to be an MIT, or any fees to participate in recruitment. Another possible explanation is that recommendation letters are seen as part of the 'application' rule.

[clarinette]

That makes sense. It also probably gets out the hinkyness of "well, what if the faculty member isn't an SAI?" My collegiate chapter didn't have that requirement on recs, but I could see a chapter having a problem with that.