Fundraising Initiative for the Graduating Senior Award and Ritual Improvement Scholarship

HAPPY NOVEMBER 15th Alumni!!!

I pleased to announce our fundraising initiatives! As you all know, the Midwest District Alumni Association charges no membership fee, but we still wish to provide support to our Active Members. This next year at convention we plan to still offer our Life Membership Scholarships: two scholarships in total to help cover the cost of Life Membership for one graduating Kappa Kappa Psi and one Tau Beta Sigma member. 

In addition, this year we are offing a new award, our Ritual Improvement Scholarship. This scholarship will be one $100 check to a Midwest District Chapter that will provide them the funds to improve their ritual materials. We have already received an alumni donation to fund this scholarship this year. We hope to continue to support this award in the future.

In order to fund these scholarships, we plan to sell T-Shirts. T-shirts will be on sale until December 16th, so please consider supporting the Midwest District! T-shirts can be purchased through our Booster site. We need to sell 10 shirts before order will be printed. Also, additional donations can be made through the Booster site. T-shirts will be shipped directly to you. The link is provided below. .

https://www.booster.com/mwdaa

I hope all is well and you all have a fantastic holiday season.

AEA and ITB,

Your MWDAA 2014-2015 Officers

Future Office Structure and October Announcements!

Happy Fall Midwest District,

Sorry for the lack of an update recently but here we go!

We have been trying to hold Local Area Meetups on a monthly to bi-monthly basis. These meetups have been successful and enjoyable and we wish to continue doing them as an Alumni Association in the years to come.

In order to incorporate these into our organization we are going to be proposing changes to our officer structure at convention this year. As officers we believe it would be beneficial to dissolve the Alumni at Large positions and then subsequently make the Vice President of Membership into a Vice President of Membership for KKPsi and a Vice President of Membership for TBS.

In addition to changing the VPM structure, we will create the positions of Local Area Meetup Bosses. These LAMBs would be appointed after convention by the MWDAA officers and be in charge of planning local events on a monthly to bi-monthly basis. These LAMBs would report their doings to the VPMs.

All of these changes are proposed at this time and we would love your feedback.

IN ADDITION! Look for Local Area Meetups in November (Various Potluck Fellowship Thanksgivings). On November 15th we will be announcing and pushing our fundraising initiative. We will open up the order form for our T-shirts as well as a donation site for MWDAA. As you all know there is no membership charge for being in the MWDAA but we still try and extend Life Membership Scholarships to a MWD Graduating Senior from Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma. These scholarships are funded completely by donations so please consider buying a shirt or donating some money to the MWDAA.

In a future blog post we will be discussing some other award opportunities that we will be offering through the Midwest District. Any questions, comments, or concerns can be directed to Nic Rorrer at (nrorrer@gmail.com)

I hope you all are having a fantastic fall full of pumpkin spice lattes.

AEA,

Nic

Shirt Preview!

Introducing Life Updates: First Member - Becky Brittenham!

Greetings Alumni!

One of the projects the MWDAA has decided to roll out is our life update form. This is a simple survey that you can go at anytime and fill out to inform the Midwest District about any changes in your life recently! We love to here from you and we would love to share your triumphs with the rest of the Midwest District. We will put these life updates on our blog and once a semester we will compile these life updates into a newsletter. The link to submit these life updates can be found here

For our first life update, we are excited to share with you a short update from Becky Brittenham. Becky is the current Secretary/Treasurer for the MWDAA after serving as the Tau Beta Sigma Alumna at Large for the MWDAA last year. Becky hails from the Theta Mu Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma in Kearny Nebraska. Becky graduated from college in 2007. Becky's life update is best put in her own words in which she says:

"I got a new job in my hometown of North Platte. I'm going to be teaching with my old band teacher, and even be his boss for a couple of classes! Very exciting!"

Congratulations to Becky and we all wish you the Best of Luck!

Spring 2014 Newsletter!

The Spring 2014 newsletter is now available.  See some of the exciting events that will be happening this summer!

Download it here:Spring 2014

KKPsi Alumnus-at-Large Introduction

Greetings, Alumni!

I'm Maggie Greenwood, and this year I will be serving you as the Midwest District Alumni Association Alumnus-at-Large for Kappa Kappa Psi.  I had the pleasure of working with the alumni last year as VPSP and am looking forward to all the exciting things this new year and new position have to offer.

For those of you I don't yet know, here's a bit about me:  I'm a Life Member of the Epsilon Psi chapter at Missouri State University where I had the opportunity to serve as chapter Treasurer for one term; additionally, I was Midwest District President during the 2010-2011 academic year.  During my graduate studies at the University of North Texas, I had the opportunity to get to know the Southwest District where I became an Honorary Member.  I moved back to the Midwest in 2013 when I moved to Denver.  It has been an excellent year back home, and I look forward to many more!

This year, I would like to focus even more on our social and professional network as alumni.  We have the opportunity to help each other as Brothers, Sisters, and professionals, so this year we will be planning more social events throughout the district to help connect us.  This month, there will be a Royals' baseball game in Kansas City (details to come), and in July we will be gathering for Drums Along the Rockies (details below).  We are also planning for things like Oktoberfest and appearances at district events like District Days and Convention.  At each of these events, we hope you will join us and get to know one another as well as taking advantage of the opportunity for professional networking (engineers talking to other engineers, teachers talking to other teachers, etc.)

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me or any member of the Alumni Council.

ITB,
Maggie

Drums Along the Rockies

When: Saturday, July 12, 2014

Time: gates open at 5pm, show begins at 6:30

Where: Sports Authority Field at Mile High

Cost: tickets vary throughout the stadium, but we are suggesting group members buy tickets in the $35 area of section 105 (a nearly central and slightly elevated section of the stadium).  Parking in the stadium lots will be $10.  Tickets can be purchased by going to the following link:

http://ascendevents.bknights.org/PurchaseTickets.aspx

Plan:  meet at The Original Brooklyn’s (2644 W Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80204) around 4:30pm for pre-show drinks, food, and socializing.  At about 6pm, we will head to the stadium for the show.  Anyone who is interested can meet back at Brooklyn’s after the show for more fun!

VPM Introduction - Zack Rabarchek

Greetings alumni of the Midwest! I hope you are reading this in good health and free of stress (like that actually happens! Haha) :D

My name is Zack Rebarchek and I’m the newly elected VPM! For those of you I haven’t had the pleasure to interact with, I’d like to share a bit about myself. I’m a Life Member of Tau Beta Sigma’s Zeta Delta chapter at the University of Kansas. In the past I’ve held the offices of President and VPSP for the MWD and chapter President, VPM, Treasurer, and Liaison. While at KU, I spent my free time studying various areas of business. Somehow I dabbled enough to get degrees in Business Administration, Entrepreneurship, and Technical Communications. I’m currently taking classes through various online programs for an MBA.

Enough about me, let’s move on to something much more important… Us. We have the foundations of something great in our midst. To build on this foundation, we are planning many things as an executive council. My personal goals focus on expanding and building our membership. To do this I’m sending informative emails to chapter presidents and as many officers as possible at the end of each semester. To build involvement, I’m working with the rest of the council to provide multiple opportunities for members across the district to meet up. There are several events we are looking into, Drums Across the Rockies, Kansas City Royals/BBQ, and possibility a couple events smaller/more local.

If you have any questions or would like to talk about the alumni association, please do not hesitate to contact us! 

ITB, Zack Rebarchek

VPSP Introduction - Neil Siemers

Hey, everybody!  Neil here, your wonderful Vice President of Special Projects, and I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss some of my plans for the upcoming year.  They are merely plans, after all, so I’m open and receptive to any feedback you might have.  Of course, as I hold my power with dictatorial authority, your suggestions pale in comparison to any slight whim I might have, enacting even the most trivial of ideas with ruthless… err…I mean, I was elected through a democratic process, and therefore I have an obligation to the ideas of those who saw fit to elect me.  *cough*  At any rate.

The first thing I plan to accomplish is a revision of the Graduation Senior Award Packet.  It’s currently set up as a list of questions, which means most of our submissions write lengthy paragraphs for each individual question, resulting in a lot of pages.  Which isn’t a terrible thing, until you consider how many of the questions are redundant.  It’s hard to talk about high musical attainment without mentioning responsible band membership, and I can’t think of any way to promote the existence and welfare of KKY or TBS that doesn’t also involve being active in its worthwhile projects.  And yet, with the current application, these are all separate questions.  Mind you, they’re all valid points, but that doesn’t mean they need to be separate questions.  Myself, I’d rather make the applicants write a one page essay discussing why they deserve the award, hitting on as many points as possible.  Maybe two pages, if I’m feeling generous.  It won’t cut down on the amount of purple prose we receive, but at least we can kick the redundancy down a few notches.

My next plan involves taking the role of Historian, and making it into more of a group effort.  Nic has already talked about having a Picasa album for district events.  Ideally, everyone is equally involved in taking photos, and making sure they all get uploaded for the world to view.  I like physical scrapbooks as much as the next person, but when your organization spans ten states, it’s really not practical to have a scrapbook that you can only look at if you happen to living in the right area.

From there… well, that’s all I have at the moment.  Traditionally, those are the two main things that a VPSP has been expected to focus on.  Rest assured, the council and I are debating several other ideas; you’ll get to hear about those at a later date, once they’ve become more concrete.  Until then, there’s an entire comments section just waiting for your thoughts and opinions!