Tag: Alumni Association

Connect with Chi Phi

Facebook…Twitter…Instagram…with so much technology out there, it’s easy to get bogged down with the various social websites, and even easier to drift further and further away from your Brothers in the Chi Phi Fraternity.  Well, Chi Phi has found a way to keep your Brothers close with Chi Phi Connect.

chiphiconnect

An innovative, efficiency-enabling tool that networks our membership, Chi Phi Connect is a Chapter’s communication portal and the go-to place for Chi Phi resources for undergraduates and Alumni alike. With drag-and-drop technology, you can customize your Chi Phi Connect dashboard, putting front and center the tools you use the most and the things that you want to see. Make it your own by choosing your newsfeeds, widgets for your dashboard, adding your own pictures under your profile and linking your Facebook account.

Chi Phi Connect

Your Chi Phi Connect provides:

  • Facebook integration that allows you to connect your Facebook and Chi Phi Connect accounts, log in with your Facebook credentials, check your news feed and see your friends.
  • Customization to your heart’s content! Drag-and-drop onto your dashboard the tools you use the most and the things that you want to see and change them anytime.
  • Easy access to connect with our membership through volunteer, brother, chapter and alumni association searches plus your chapter’s complete roster with contact information right at your fingertips.
  • A calendar that may be managed for personal use, chapter use, displays important National event dates and may even be integrated with your Google calendar.
  • The resource center to acquire and share documents, pictures and tutorials within your own chapter and from Chi Phi National Headquarters.
  • The ability to voice and acquire opinions through user-friendly and customizable polls.
  • Auto-notification of activity such as new Chi Phi documents uploaded for your access, polls or calendar events for you to see, and Facebook notifications and requests you’ve received.
  • Your personal picture profile…you’ll decide how you look on Chi Phi Connect, in member lists and communications with your Chapter.

For more information, check out the full website at http://www.chiphi.org/connect

 

President’s Message – Looking Ahead

Brothers,

As 2013 closes and a new year begins, I think it is just to reflect on the past. In 2013, the DZAA participated in its first ever philanthropy event, we held a staggering number of social events–Third Thursdays, Football Tailgates, Happy hours, a Christmas Party– we presented the first inaugural USF Chi Phi Scholarship Scramble, created a long term home for the DZAA online through www.usfchiphialumni.com, and enlisted a handful of men to help lead our organization to new heights.

Although, as the saying goes, the past is the past, it’s great to have a storied history to recollect; but those days have come and gone. If there is a single greatest weakness of Fraternities, it’s their past. Not that we had done anything particularly wrong in the past, but we spend more time remembering than we do planning. PASTWe like to recall how things were and contrast the differences between then and now. It’s a default mechanism we all have.  It hides in our Fraternity mind, this idea that we must daunt on the past, and somehow, through Fraternity wizardry, it will codify our experience as justified. The problem with this scenario is, that if we spend our todays reflecting on the past, then how will our tomorrows look? What has more of an influence on tomorrow? Yesterday or Today? How do we achieve greatness and creative ingenuity, if we simply seek to copy and paste, to forgerize our younger selves?

As an organization, we could simply fall into a complacent bubble, and rest on the achievements of 2013. We could say “hey, we have already done more than ever, and potentially more than anyone else, so we should feel good and be content.” NOWFor some of us, the notion that we made an oath at initiation to always be a Chi Phi–to stay involved and to be the best man we can be–is enough to hold our attention. Others feel a nagging responsibility to the Brothers that are carrying the flag, to those phone calls, e-mails and not so subtle asks for money or help.  Thank you, to those of you who answered those calls; but I’m interested in a different path. I’m interested in being creative, in looking at our problems in a new light. I want to think as though money did not exist, that we had unlimited manpower and an overwhelming creative attitude.

I, by pure chance, ran into Brother Milo Cambridge the other day, and we reminisced over cigars.  Our conversation started with niceties, moved onto entrepreneurship, and eventually became a philosophical discussion about life (cigars always lead to philosophy). Near the end of our conversation, Brother Cambridge informed me about the meaning of life. He said that life was about creation, that what a person creates is the only true immortalization that they can achieve. I instantly thought of the DZAA and came to this paradoxical question: What could an organization that is seemingly immortal (we have lasted 30 years and could theoretically last for hundreds more) create? The answer is only limited by our imaginations.

In conclusion, 2014 will be just that, limited by our imagination.  Sure, we need money and support from all of you; but more than that, we will be creative.  We won’t say “that failed in the past”—we will say “tell me more about that.”  So, tell us more about what you want the DZAA to be.  Don’t limit yourself, because we’re immortal, and we are able to create anything you can imagine.

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I look forward to a prosperous year filled with frivolity and creation and sharing it with all of you.

Fraternally,

David Ebner

DZ ‘08

50 and Still Going Strong…

As many of you will recall, when the DZAA website was re-launched this year, 50Jubilaeumwe made the promise of regular updates and news items that are relevant to the Alumni, to Chi Phi, and to all of our Brothers.  With 50 web-postings now under our belt, the website continues to grow – not just in appearance and postings, but also in readership and online hits as well!  With well over 200 hits in the past month alone, the website has become a steady check-in for many of the Alumni!

The website offers new posts to the front page every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and after some miscellaneous articles in the beginning, we’ve created a regular schedule of articles – including the latest_news1Where Are They Now? features, the every-Monday Chapter News and Alumni News updates alternating each week, the DZAA Heroes spotlights, the Fundraiser highlights, the Around the Peninsula newsflashes, the President’s Message, the Social Events, and others.  Your Board has been working hard to keep you informed, updated, and occasionally reminded of days past, and if the positive feedback we’ve been receiving is any indication, you – the Alumni – appreciate the constant feed of posts.

Now, after four months and 50 articles, we’d like to see what you have to share.  If you have stories you’d like to tell, memories you’d like to share, news you would like to post, or perhaps even a little self-promotion you’d like to get out there, now’s the time to do it!  update-2Whether it’s a one-time article about something either you or another Brother has achieved, or an on-going series of articles related to the Alumni or Chi Phi in general, just let us know and we’ll be more than happy to work you into the schedule.  Remember, the DZAA and this website is not just about the Exec Board – it’s about ALL of the Alumni, and the more you participate, the closer those bonds of Brotherhood will grow.  Feel free to contact any member of the Board – David Ebner, Kyllan Purdon, Todd Latoski, or Ryan Suarez – and let them know you want to write.  Who knows?  The next posting you see on here could be yours!