Last week’s strategic planning weekend was deemed a huge success for all Greek Life organizations at The University of Tampa.
Participants affirmed traditional core values like academic excellence, inclusion, integrity, leadership, lifelong friendship and social responsibility, formulating new plans to better demonstrate these virtues in the immediate and prolonged future.
“Seeing fraternity and sorority members, all from different groups, working together to provide feedback on the strategic plan was one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had at UT,” said Kim Northrup, assistant director of OSLE.
“There was a real sense of energy, collaboration, and hope for the future.”
The collective vision of campus fraternities and sororities is to earn the trust and respect of their academic peers by personally defining the aforementioned values.
They strive to excel in all fields, academic and social, thereby enhancing the values of the entire UT community through example.
The mission of strategic planning weekend is to supply members of Greek Life with further instruction and guidance on how to fulfill these goals.
UT Greek organizations recognize the value of opportunities for improvement.
Participating members divided themselves into individual task forces, which looked at the issues from different angles.
Greek Life seeks holistic improvement through the areas of academics, accountability, involvement, member education and alumni and advisor relations.
To each of these five components was assigned unique short and long term goals against which to measure progress.
“It is an exciting time in the fraternity and sorority community,” said Jaclyn Carden, Greek Life Coordinator. “I am looking forward to working with students and staff on the task forces to move forward and create positive change.”
One year, three years, and five years plans were instituted to facilitate this change.
Large-scale issues such as alcohol regulation, scholarship incentives for outstanding academic performance, improved faculty/student relations and recruitment restructuring are addressed in the new plan, as well as many others.
Education is also a major goal of the new program.
“This will mean making the rest of the fraternity and sorority community aware of the changes, educating other stakeholders—including faculty, staff, alumni advisors and headquarters—on the changes, and holding themselves and their peers accountable,” said Carden.