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.

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Location:New York City