SEPC Day 3 Recap

I spent the weekend of March 31-April 3rd in Atlanta for SEPC, the Southeastern Panhellenic Conference, one of the premier college women's leadership conferences in the country. Because I have lots to share (and lots of photos!) I'm going to share three posts about the conference, one for each day. [preview post here; day one post here; day two post here.]

SEPC Day 3: Saturday

Saturday started nice and early at 7:45am with an Affiliation Breakfast and t-shirt swap. We had a great turnout of Alpha Chi Omega sisters for the event, in spite of the early start time. I loved the cut-out t-shirt signs that marked our tables!

Sister checking out t-shirts for swapping.

I loved this OMG Phi Mu t-shirt; this sister was really excited to get it in the swap.

a group photo of all of the Alpha Chi Omegas at breakfast

After a fun hour of socializing and bonding with sisters, it was time to put our thinking caps back on. Again today, like Friday, we had a wealth of choices in terms of topics and speakers.

From 9a-10a I learned a ton about Real Change in Kim Novak's session. Kim is an expert in "student–focused risk management, hazing prevention and campus safety," and her approach to looking at issues in chapters and on campuses comprehensively with an eye toward prevention gave most all of us in the room some aha! moments. She would be someone to invite to campus before there's a problem; her insights and techniques could help a good campus take the right steps to becoming great! Learn more about her work: http://www.novaktalks.com/

From 10:15 - 11:15, I sat in on Reaching the People Who Matter to You: Simple Steps to Redefine Your Campus Image with Dr. Tait Martin His use of humor and real life stories from his own life and fraternity experience helped drive home his points. For example, the average person doesn't speak sorority language - so on your Panhellenic and chapter websites and in your other materials, be sure to use terms everyone can relate to. 

Learn more about him at http://www.drtaitmartin.com/

I took a quick break for the festivities to have lunch with my Twitter buddy and Alpha Chi sister Mandy. We met at Big Chow Grill which is great fun - you pick all your ingredients (rice or noodles, veggies, meat, seasonings and sauce and the cooks stir-fries it all up for you - delish!! and walking distance from the hotel.) She wrote a really nice blog post about our lunch which you can read here. Our hour together went by entirely too fast!

Then it was back to the conference for more learning! From 1-4pm I attended Release Figure Management - Advanced, a session for university professionals and alumnae advisors. Release Figure Management (RFM) is a system that helps all chapters on a campus do as well as possible during sorority Recruitment. The best part is it helps more potential new members stay in recruitment and ultimately join a sorority. If you're interested, Tri-Sigma has a great slideshow introduction to RFM here. The session was great - it is so helpful to hear other people's questions and perspectives on things. I also learned that 410 campuses are now using this method (there are currently 655 campuses with NPC groups but only those that use a fully-structured recruitment model can implement RFM. [Fully-structured recruitment is the traditional model where all potential members attend first round and then attend fewer events as recruitment continues, ending with a preference day after which each women lists her favorite groups in rank order in order to be matched to receive an invitation to join one group.]) 

I spent some time later that afternoon having a snack with Jaclyn and Kate from FSU's Alpha Chi chapter, picking up the item I won in the silent auction, and getting reading for the Closing Banquet, which was a lovely event. Many college Panhellenics received awards at dinner and Julie Cain Burkhard inspired us all to say yes to the sorority experience during her key note speech. Here are some photos from the Banquet: 

Alpha Chi Omega sisters with our past National President, Julie (front row, center, in gray)

Julie with UWF sisters: Christine (Zeta Psi, Loyola-New Orleans), left, and Christina (Kappa Xi, UWF), right

Julie and I with FSU sisters, from left to right: me, Jaclyn, Julie, Kate and Whitney

I wrapped up the conference with some bonding time with Alpha Chi alums Christine and Kassie before a good nights sleep and quick trip home on Sunday morning. See you next year, SEPC!