Orientation III - The Beginning

Friday January 27


Today marks the first day of our last week in Jackson, Mississippi. Due to the wonderful weather of Maine my flights were slightly delayed this morning so, unfortunately, I had to miss dinner. Jeremy and Sarah picked me up at the airport around 11:30pm and we went over to the hotel to get me checked in and to pick up Esteban and Tameka. All we really have had the chance to do, though, was go get snacks at the nearby 24-hour grocery store (so jealous!). We had sometime to catch up before deciding to get some sleep before tomorrow. The topic? Oberndorf Lifeline to Completion Scholarship. Looking forward to talking more in depth about something we have been working so hard on. (By the way...if you are looking for more information....click here :-)

Saturday January 28

Based on what we've seen of the agenda, today was one of the more laid back days of our final orientation. We didn't have to be at breakfast until 8:00 and had until 8:30 to relax before leaving for the Center of Excellence. The rest of the day continued in the same basic manner - beginning and ending with discussions of the Oberndorf Lifeline to Completion Scholarship Challenge. We developed and edited scripts and worked with Courtney Taylor to plan strategies for getting the word out there (and maximizing our fundraising) which took quite a bit of time to determine and coordinate. Once things were finally set, however, we left for lunch with Monika.                                                            

When we got back from lunch we got to be some of the first to hear about new plans relating to CollegeFish.Based on the grant from the Gates Foundation, CollegeFish will soon be undergoing some major changes - including mentoring communities, a transfer success plan, a net tuition calculator, and an early alert system. Eventually, the intent is to be open up for all community college students - not just Phi Theta Kappa students. Initially, this will only be true for the 125 community colleges in the states of Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, Washington, and Indiana. Over time, however, this will expand and, even now, any student from any state can get involved. Stay tuned for more information!

We spent the rest of the day discussing scripts for short videos related to the Oberndorf Lifeline to Completion Scholarship challenge, spent some time relaxing at dinner, and finished off the night with closed room team building. At the end of the day, every team has their problems but, overall, I am incredibly grateful for my teammates and can't believe how far we have come. Being so close to the end, it's hard to know that, in just a few short months, our time together will be greatly reduced...

Looking forward to making our last couple of months together memorable!

Kappa Hugs,
Danielle

New Jersey's Regional Meeting

 

On October 15 I was given the opportunity to attend New Jersey's Regional Meeting. New Jersey is one of the states within the Middle States Region but, in hopes of increasing attendance at the fall meeting, the region has more than one daylong regional meeting. As far as I know they are the only region that does it but it is certainly an interesting idea and seems to be working well. Since the meeting started at 8:30 on Saturday, I was supposed to fly in Friday night. In fact, I left Maine (or attempted to leave Maine) at noon. Over the next twenty four hours my flight was canceled, the flight I was switched to landed too late to get me on the final flight to New Jersey. I was called a liar and put on standby after six other people - even though I was the first of those six to try to get on standby. It was one of the most frusturating experiences of my life.

I finally made it to New Jersey on Saturday at about noon. I felt completely disheveled and things weren't even done going wrong ---->
(anything look different about the picture?) Luckily, the Middle States Region is a group of extremely gracious hosts and I had a wonderful time anyway. I got there, had lunch, and spent time time some time meeting with chapter members in attendance. Especially exciting was getting to meet some of their Regional Officers and catch up with a fellow International Officer Candidate from the area. I then delivered the Headquarters Update and participated in the ending ceremonies. I couldn't believe all of the Phi Theta Kappans that I met - what an extremely motivated region with incredible goals and ideas.

After everyone had said their goodbyes, I was invited out to dinner with the regional team (to my favorite restaurant) and was very grateful to have a little bit more time to spend with them. Immediately after dinner, however, we went our separate ways so that I could finally pick up my luggage (from an airport different from the one I landed at) and get a couple of hours of sleep before having to wake up to another full day of flying. If it wasn't for such wonderful company, this would've been one of my worst experiences. As it stands, I guess it counts for a funny story and I made some great friends in the process. Can't wait to see everyone again!

Until next time!
Danielle

New York's Regional Meeting

Phi Theta Kappa,

October 7th - October 9th was New York's Leadership Conference at Borough of Manhattan Community College in Manhattan. This was my first Regional Meeting as a Headquarters Representative and I had a fantastic time!




The event officially began with dinner at 6:00pm on Friday followed by the first General Session to give everybody an overview of all the important information we were going to be doing over the weekend. New York's fabulous Regional Officer team introduced themselves and Dr. Sadie Bragg (BMCC Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs) welcomed everybody and discussed her personal involvement with C4. It was so exciting to hear her speak on plans that BMCC had planned to support Community College Completion (including dedicating a wall near where the conference took place for signatures. It's always inspiring to hear an administrator speak so highly of the initiatives that are so important to community college students! The Alumni Association (Zeta) hosted a fellowship event uniquely patterned after Survivor following this first general session.




We all got there early Saturday for breakfast prior to a busy day. We began with the Headquarters Update and then I got to work with 2009-2010 International President Edgar Romero on a presentation about researching for Honors in Action. We separated the members into teams who were responsible for one issue of the Honors Study Topic and were only given about half an hour to research their issue. They then brought it back and explained to the group what resources they used, how they used it, and what possible needs they could research further. The idea was to show those members that were feeling overwhelmed by the Honors in Action (which, let's face it, is probably most of us :-) ) how much they could do in such little time by coming together as a team. It was a great activity and Phi Theta Kappans in attendance did an incredible job!




From there, various workshops were hosted for attendees. Edgar and I did two workshops on the write up for the Honors in Action project where we briefly reviewed the Honors in Action planning model, the rubrics, and some excepts from award winning entries. There were two more after we hosted ours so I went to one on College Fish put on by Harmonie Kobanghe and one on Team Building put on by Monroe Community College. The workshop on Team Buildinghad everybody do a smaller version of Meyer's Briggs and then talked about the different personalities of the different "colors." Everybody in attendance was given a bracelet of their color - a unique way to remind people of the things they learned.







We all had a bit of free time between workshops and dinner and we did a little bit of exploring in New York. The hotel that we stayed in (Millenium Hilton) was not far from the Wall Street protests which was absolutely crazy! The hotel is also part of the World Trade Center rebuild which was pretty exciting. The night ended with two fantastic speakers - a distinguished alumni and a volunteer from Make a Wish Foundation. I had a great time hearing their inspiring stories.








Sunday came way took quickly but was a wonderful way to close the conference. Tim Gaura led the attendees through a reflection on the different pieces of the conference and Michael Adams discussed the Region's goals.

I had such a great time at my first conference! Thank you again for having me New York! :-)

Sincerely,
Danielle

For more information about the event, the Region's goals, or just the New York Region in general, visit www.nyptk.org.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:New York City

September Check In

So, the semester is officially underway and I am definitely having to "fine tune" my time management skills! Though I don't have anything "official" to share with you, your International Officer team is keeping busy with their various responsibilities.




Since our time in Mississippi, we have had two team meetings using adobe connect. For the foreseeable future our plan is to have a meeting every Tuesday which, thus far, have been about two hour meetings. For the past couple of meetings, we have spent the majority of the time finalizing our goals which we are set to present to Dr. Risley and headquarters on September 29th. They are set to "launch" on October 3rd, so I will be able to elaborate on them more soon!




We have also had small roles in things like next year's campaign brochure, the 2012 Guide to Officer's Success, and planning for our Regional meetings. My first one is coming up October 7th-9th and I am beginning travel preparations and getting excited to visit the New York region! I got my official name tag in the mail the other day and am definitely starting to feel the anticipation :-)




On the home front, it's been difficult to adjust to my role within my own chapter. They have given me the title of officer at large as a way to justify paying for my travel to the New England Region events but the other officers of the chapter weren't around last year - and it's been difficult proving my worth in the chapter while trying to maintain the distance necessary for them to accomplish certain tasks. Given my role within the chapter in past years, it's difficult standing on the sidelines and not participating fully in chapter events. I guess that nobody said my term would be easy...

See you all again soon!
Danielle Swartz


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

International Officer Orientation Part II

Hey everyone! This past week was the second part of our three part orientation at The Center of Excellence in Jackson, Mississippi. The major purpose of this event was really to come together as a team and set some goals for the coming academic year.




Jeremy, Esteban, and I arrived Wednesday. Unfortunately, Sarah had class so late in the day that she did not get there until midnight and Tameka had to finish up some things at school before meeting us the next morning. The day ended up just being a time for us to hang out, relax, and work on our Honors Study Topic speeches.




The orientation officially began at 8am on Thursday morning. We left for The Center of Excellence and we given a brief lesson on podium etiquette. We also randomly chose the order in which we would be giving our speeches before Headquarters' staff. Speeches began at nine and was, by far, the part of the Orientation that the team was most nervous about. The purpose of the exercise was the practice of giving our speech in front of another group and to have them recorded for the Competitive Edge. Look for it soon! :-)




Following our speeches, the International Officers met with Luke Davis for exercises in Team Dynamics. After about an hour, we took a break for lunch and then returned for another hour of discussion. Part of the exercise was to write up a "review" about our other team members. We have not yet seen the result of that exercise but, truthfully, I am a little nervous about it.




We then had a meeting with Courtney Taylor for constructive feedback on our speeches following filming with Tom Rowden. A lot of what we did was for C4 and next year's International Convention. I'm excited to see the result of the filming!




After a brief update on the organizational priorities, we departed for dinner with Dr. Risley and headquarters staff. A lot of the discussion was surrounding college completion. The dinner ended at around 10:00pm so was closely followed by bed.




Friday was another busy day accompanied with some bad news. Because of Hurricane Irene, my flights were moved to Saturday. Knowing that I would be leaving a day early was a bummer but we adjusted some of the schedule so it made me feel a little better. We began the day with a meeting of the Speaker's Bureau where we were given organizational updates and our fall travel schedule! I am very excited to share that I will be going to New York's October Regional meeting and New Jersey's. Looking forward to my first Regional meetings :-)




The Speaker's Bureau meeting was followed by a look a the new website to be launched in September and lunch. We then discussed our responsibilities while at Regional meetings and did some role playing surrounding things that could occur at these meetings and how to handle them.




By the time we were finished, there was some time to relax before going to dinner. We had our last team dinner of the semester and spent the rest of the night (until about 2 am discussing our goals). Because they have not been finalized, I am not planning on sharing them in this entry but we discussed everything from trying to get more one star level chapters to our interaction with the chapters and how we could contribute to C4.




Saturday morning was tough. As everybody else was getting ready for the last day of Orientation, I was packing to head home. My flight was leaving at 11:50am so I left the Center of Excellence for the airport around 11 after having breakfast with my team and discussing with Monika and Jennifer some of the goals that we had come up with. I can't tell you much about the last day for everybody else, just what was on the agenda - rehearing the headquarters update and various workshops and discussing how to make each of them interactive.




I was back with my team again at about 10:00pm my time for the dinner meeting with Dr. Risley to discuss our team goal ideas. It was extremely difficult to be on speaker phone for something that everybody else was able to be present for but I was grateful to my team, Dr. Risley, and Monika for making sure that I was there in some way and giving me the chance to participate. You can't always predict the things that may go wrong.




Anyway, I'll give you all an update once our goals are finalized :-) Any input you have between now and then or if there is anything else that we can do to help, be sure to let us know. All of our e-mail addresses are posted at ptk.org or you can easily find any of us around Facebook.


Until next time!

Danielle Swartz

Location:Jackson, Mississippi

International Honors Institute - Day Five

The second to last day of the Honors Institute was R&R day and, like many Phi Theta Kappans, the International Officer team took this opportunity to sleep in way too late. I wish that I had more pictures of the day, and I will shortly, but most of the pictures taken today were taken with other people's cameras.

After sleeping in until just shy of 11:30, we spent sometime as a team looking for a good place for lunch. We ended up at Fire and Ice and stayed there for a couple of hours just relaxing and having a good time before separating to do our own things. I actually ended up back at the dorms for the next couple of hours to get some work done but also spent some time organizing a dinner for my seminar group.

We ended up heading to The Cheesecake Factory - about half of the seminar group and a couple of guests - and having a wonderful time. I thank
everyone who was able to make it out tonight and the kind Phi Theta Kappans that treated us - completely unexpected but very much appreciated.

Only one more day of the 2011 International Honors Institute - sad how quickly this past week has gone...

Love,
Danielle

International Honors Institute - Day Four

Today was a unique day that began with a tour of the Freedom Trail. My seminar group divided up the tour and we each had to research a spot and talk about. I think that it was great practice and it made the event that much more fun. It was not followed by a seminar meeting, as typically the Seminars are, simply because of time constraints. We had plenty of time to talk on the tour, though. It was a great experience.

After the tour, the IO's had a luncheon with the Regional Coordinators. It was fun to meet other coordinators within my division and it was great to run into my own regional coordinator, whom I have really not seen much of during the trip. Basically it was basically a meet and greet - more for networking than anything else. The event was pretty short and was followed by a small amount of down time that was much needed.

At around 3:30, we had our first Reader's Theater rehearsal (which I will post pictures up as soon as I get them). The IO's have a hilarious play that opens the evening and I have no idea how many groups there are going to be but I can say that last year's was great and I am certain that this year is likely to be better.






That night's session was with Fred Haise from Apollo 13. He was the first presenter that utilized a visual aid which was very unique. It was a great presentation, definitely among my favorites. Afterward, each seminar group got there picture taken with Mr. Haise. The following seminar group meeting, a lot of interesting questions came up. The facilitators of the meeting had a different way of running things that, probably wasn't very popular, but worked great.



The IO's then hosted a game night at the dorms. This was something that we began talking about only late yesterday so there were definitely so bumps in planning and beginning it, but it was incredibly successful. There were a lot of people there and everybody seemed to have a great time. My favorite part was that we were able to just relax and have fun with everyone there. For those who attended, you'll have to give us some feedback! :-)

Love,
Danielle