Alpha Chi National College Honor Society Sponsorship
In the fall of 2014, Mikee Delony and Lynette Austin asked me to become a sponsor for the ACU chapter of Alpha Chi National College Honor Society. So many of their members and officers were science majors and they needed a STEM mentor for the group. Alpha Chi invites students who are in the top 10% of their class to be members of the society. Up until about six years ago, the ACU chapter was active only in inducting new members. However, Mikee, especially, was instrumental in changing that. Now our chapter is very active. We have received Star Chapter status for the past five years. In order to obtain this status, each year we must induct new members, have an induction ceremony, sponsor a service event, sponsor an academic event, and send students and sponsors to the national convention. In the spring of 2016, I became the primary sponsor while Mikee took on a co-sponsor role.
Working with ACU Alpha Chi students has been a great experience. The first year that I was a sponsor, I helped where I could, but mostly, I watched. I watched the cycle of the Alpha Chi year – induction activities in the fall, scholarship applications and convention preparations in the spring. I watched officer selection and how to let the officers take ownership and leadership of the organization. I watched how to interact with the national office. I watched the national convention and how it was different than the discipline-specific conferences I am accustomed to. After that first year Mikee and Lynette thought I was ready to take on the full responsibility of being the primary sponsor.
I initially agreed to sponsor this chapter because I thought it would be a good way to be active on campus with students outside of my department. I had previously been asked to be a sponsor of a social club, but I quickly rejected that notion. I do not really understand social clubs at all. However, I could relate well to an academic organization, and am used to mentoring high achieving students.
Since 2015, 291 students have accepted our invitation to be a part of Alpha Chi. Many of these students are inactive. They become part of Alpha Chi so that they will be able to wear the green and blue cords at graduation. However, there is a core group every year that seeks to be more active. Last year, we had a very successful year as we earned our Star Chapter status. About 100 students participated in our fall induction at Chapel on the Hill. In the spring, we held a blood drive as our service project. We worked with Meek Blood Center to move their already scheduled blood drive into the Living Room of the Campus Center. We also publicized the event very well. The blood drive was so successful that potential donors were turned away because there were too many people giving blood. Meek Blood Center said this had never happened before. For our academic event, we co-sponsored a talk from C.S. Lewis scholar, Michael Ward. We helped to publicize this event. Another member had her research published in Alpha Chi’s new undergraduate research journal, Alethia.
Our Alpha Chi year ended with a trip to the national convention in Washington, D.C. We opened up applications to all current members of our chapter, and chose 13 students to present their research at the convention. A requirement for presentation at the convention is that the students must also present at the ACU Undergraduate Research Festival. This past year we left for the convention the day after the ACU URF. Since I am also part of the URF judging committee, I had feedback from the judges for all of our students. I spent time going over the feedback with each student so that they could make adjustments and give their best presentation. Additionally, each student gave their presentation at least once to one of our sponsors in Washington, D.C. before the convention and received further feedback. With the exception of one student, the presentations that they gave at Alpha Chi were phenomenal. I was proud to have them represent ACU so well at such an important national convention. One student won her division, another won a regional scholarship based partially on his presentation, and a third won a prestigious national scholarship.
ACU representatives at the Alpha Chi National Convention, April 2016
While at the convention, the ACU officers volunteered us to be our region’s nominee for the President’s Cup for 2017. Our officers believed we would be the most competitive chapter in our region. The President’s Cup is the most prestigious award Alpha Chi offers. It is basically the “best chapter in the nation” award. There are seven regions in the nation and each region nominates a chapter for this award. Three years of membership data and chapter activities are collected presented to the judging committee at the national convention. This is a very difficult award to earn. Will we be able to earn it this year? Probably not. The philosophy that we, as the ACU sponsors, hold is that we will be supportive of anything that our officers and chapter want to do. We are supporting the students and encouraging them in this endeavor, but also trying to learn lessons about how to better prepare for this nomination in the future. The sponsors had a goal of winning the President’s Cup one day, but we do not expect “one day” to be this year!
This sponsorship has been an experience of growth in several ways. The first one that was unexpected was the mentoring that I received from both Mikee Delony and Lynette Austin in several different areas. Lynette has shown me how to be more organized and how to think through all of the details of problems before they even happen. Mikee encourages me from the sponsorship in Alpha Chi to how I approach the teaching of my courses. By her example, she has taught me how to have better rapport with students and how to loosen up a little bit, but still be a responsible mentor. (Having fun does not come naturally to me.) She has also taught me a lot about teaching. She helped me design a “fun” assignment for my non-majors biology course about real zombies. She taught me all about zombies and their characteristics. I was then able to pull that together with what I knew about real zombies, such as insects infected with viruses that climb up zombie-like to the top of plants so that birds will eat them and complete the life-cycle of the virus. This assignment went over very well with the students.
I have also been changed by having relationships with some of the brightest and most motivated students in diverse areas of study at ACU. I have gotten to know students in other majors that are think deeply about important problems and how to solve them. I am impressed by their dedication and scholarship. Surprisingly, I have also seen new dimensions of the students majoring in biology, how they also think so deeply and critically about issues in other academic disciplines. This experience has taught me that biology is just a small part of the interests of the students that I teach every day. I am more aware that all of my students in my classes have many talents and dimensions that are not always apparent. Because of this experience with Alpha Chi, I strive to see all of my students differently.