Adam and Christopher interview Scott Smith, the Director of Leadership Development for Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc., to talk about the history and impact of the College of Chapters. College of Chapters is an intense, interactive program for our collegiate chapter Commanders focusing on chapter management, leadership, and core competencies.
The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. and is dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to stories from our brotherhood.
To find out more about the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at www.sigmanu.org. Also consider following us on: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | Flickr
Have feedback or a question about this episode? Want to submit an idea for a future topic you'd like to see covered? Contact the Gavel Podcast team at news@sigmanu.org.
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The Gavel Podcast - Ep 13 - College of Chapters with Scott Smith (Central Arkansas)
[Intro Music]
0:00:42.4 Adam Girtz: Hello, and welcome to Episode 13 of the Gavel Podcast. I'm Adam.
0:00:46.0 Christopher Brenton: And I'm Christopher.
0:00:47.1 Adam Girtz: The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and it's a show dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to the stories of our brotherhood.
0:00:57.9 Christopher Brenton: To find out more from the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at sigmanu.org. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at @SigmaNuHQ or by searching for Sigma Nu Fraternity.
0:01:09.8 Adam Girtz: Awesome. Well, Christopher, hello.
0:01:13.6 Christopher Brenton: How's it going?
0:01:14.7 Adam Girtz: It's great. I'm doing wonderful. How are you?
0:01:18.1 Christopher Brenton: Doing well. Good start to the new year.
0:01:20.4 Adam Girtz: Yes, yes. 2022, the first episode of the brand-new year.
0:01:24.0 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, and the start of Season Three.
0:01:27.1 Adam Girtz: Yes. Sometimes I forget that we do these in seasons, right? But yes, Season Three, it feels good to be in a third season. This is the season where I feel like every show hits its stride. Like season one is pilot and they kind of get their feeler, season two is cool, but then season three is like, oh, the real stuff starts to happen, and then you get the best episodes. Some of my favorite episodes of every... Breaking Bad season three really went off.
0:01:55.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. Well, it's hard too, because we didn't have any sort of thrilling cliffhanger at the end of the last season. There was no, what will happen? Will Adam or Christopher be here when we return? [laughter]
0:02:09.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, that was our season one to season two cliffhanger.
0:02:14.0 Christopher Brenton: We did lose Drew, so... [laughter]
0:02:17.4 Adam Girtz: Yes.
0:02:18.2 Christopher Brenton: That was the cliffhanger, I guess. [laughter]
0:02:20.4 Adam Girtz: Well, Christopher, we have a special way to start this first episode of season three. Normally these... The beginning and the end of episode is just you and I, but we do have a guest with us right away at the beginning of the episode, that's exciting. Would you care to introduce our guest?
0:02:40.1 Christopher Brenton: Well, I'll ultimately let him introduce himself, but yeah, no, it's exciting. We have another staff member joining us, so Scott Smith, our Director of Leadership Development. I won't get into too many details. I'll let him go through that. But Scott, if you want to introduce yourself, we typically kind of have a trend of inviting people to share their name, their chapter designation, institution, and then just a little bit about themselves before we get started. So if you would like to jump in.
0:03:12.2 Scott Smith: Awesome. Happy New Year, guys.
0:03:13.8 Adam Girtz: Thank you. Happy New Year, Scott.
0:03:17.0 Scott Smith: So yeah, Scott Smith, served as the Director of Leadership Development for the Fraternity, alumnus of our Lambda Phi Chapter, which is the University of Central Arkansas. I also hold a master's degree in Higher Education from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where coincidentally, I lived and worked out of for the last 10 years after moving up north, about 25 miles to Rogers, Arkansas, to be a little bit closer to my wife's hustle. She is a co-owner of a small kitchen store with a sorority sister of hers here in Downtown Rogers. But I joined Sigma Nu in the spring of 2002, and then graduated with my bachelors in spring of 2005, and immediately moved out to Lexington and into the Carriage House, and by August I was on the road consulting and working with chapters across nine states and two countries, and I did that for about a year and a half.
0:04:26.5 Scott Smith: And then the Fraternity had just opened up and started staffing out an education department, and so I showed some interest and they let me stick around, and so I started getting involved in curriculum-writing, and then managing consultants, and then we're creating new programs and so on and so forth. In 2008, I took on the leadership development role, and I've been rolling that ever since. But glad to be with you guys today. Happy New Year again. This is one of the coolest times of the year, I think, and it'll go into... I know the conversation that we want to have, but in addition to getting to set resolutions and swap out your silly dog calendar for your funny cat posters, it's just a... It's a invigorating time, particularly if you live anywhere that is north of the equator, and it is pretty chilly right now.
0:05:23.9 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. And a little bit of an Avengers assemble moment, as all three of us now, having worked in the education department in some capacity in either the past or currently, are now together. It's kind of cool.
0:05:36.3 Adam Girtz: Oh not kind of. We're in it. I'm in it directly.
0:05:40.8 Christopher Brenton: You're in it. [laughter]
0:05:41.5 Christopher Brenton: Well, Scott, you did mention working for the Fraternity, so this is a little bit of a hard segue, but I'm going to make it. So Adam and I usually kick off these episodes with a little bit of a resource plug or acknowledgment of an upcoming event, and I think one of the ones that we really want to highlight right now is staff hiring for the spring. And so hearing your story of working for the Fraternity and your journey to the position that you're in now, fitting that we would actually be able to plug that a little bit, so knowing that you're in charge of that process, I thought it would be wise to let you speak on that and kind of, for any listeners who may be interested in working for the Fraternity or know of someone, especially if you're an advisor or have a close working relationship with a chapter and you know of good men who would be great members of our team, we would love for you to pass on this information. So, Scott, if you would, definitely talk a little bit more about that experience.
0:06:49.9 Scott Smith: Yeah, for sure. The Fraternity is always looking for great people, that's not just the case during rush week in the fall, in the spring, it's also true for volunteers, to serve at various levels. But to your point, Sigma Nu employs a topflight professional paid staff. And in my tenure, that has included probably hundreds of different men, and nearly every single one of them started out directly supporting chapters and colonies as a consultant for the Fraternity. It is an entry level job, but it is so, so much more. And so whether you are, like you said, a senior that is facing down the barrel of your last semester or quarter of school, you are a sophomore that just joined, you're a volunteer or a general alumnus that knows somebody, chances are good that you've never thought about working for the Fraternity.
0:07:52.9 Scott Smith: When you take the tests in high school, the aptitudes to determine what kind of job you should get, or when you meet with your faculty advisor when you arrive on campus and start signing up for classes and they try to help you decide that journey for your life, and you get the big old list of "Here are all the careers," like working for your Fraternity is not one of the boxes you can check. And so chances are good that you've never thought about working for the fraternity. And so my pitch would be, start thinking, man, because this is an amazing opportunity to not only give back, which I think is something that all Sigma Nus have a desire, that you gain so much from your own experience and you want to help others get a similar or better experience, but in a very specific and elevated way beyond even a volunteer role, like the paid professional staff do the work of the Grand Chapter, of the High Council, to ensure that Sigma Nus get what they deserve in terms of support, membership materials, database, educational programs, all of the life skills, and really creating the foundation so that the intangibles that we all enjoy from fraternity can happen.
0:09:08.0 Scott Smith: So we are always hiring. We are always looking to add great people to our bus, to use the Jim Collins analogy. But there are two primary periods where we tend to do most of our interviews and that's around the fall application period or what is coming up on March the 1st is our spring application deadline. So this is going to be folks that are looking for a start in summer of 2022. I would plug because I know that not everybody's going to listen to this immediately, and we're going to have this episode archived, and so perhaps if you're listening to this in 2025 and beyond, it's still March 1st. It's still October 15. We're always hiring. So if you are preparing to graduate and at any point that academic year, now is the time, now is the time to start thinking. To go back to my personal story just a little bit, I thought I had it all figured out, as I'm sure that we all do at one point or another before we realize that we don't really know a lot of anything, but I had never considered working for the Fraternity.
0:10:16.5 Scott Smith: I was very involved on campus, I was obviously involved in the chapter in numerous officer roles in the house, that kind of thing. But I thought, "Hey, I'm going to go to law school, or I'm going to win the lottery," or something is just going to happen to me, and I hadn't ever considered helping other people navigate the struggles that I had faced as an officer or a member of the chapter, or reach some of the achievements that we had done at my own chapter, until literally a consultant came to the chapter and said, "Hey man, I think that you might like this. I think that you'd be good at this. You should think about this." I had gone to College of Chapters, I had gone to a Grand Chapter, and at that point, and I went to one of the little staff interest sessions and handed Brad Hastings my resume and tried to clean up and look good and pre-interview for a job.
0:11:15.0 Scott Smith: But it was definitely the people that I met and the opportunity to join that kind of group but also figure myself out and give back to the chapters that really drew me to the position. And as you can tell, however many years later, it's been now 16 and a half or something like that. I've enjoyed it, and the people have been great, and they have... We've got a good thing going here. So if you haven't ever thought about it or haven't thought that this is a realistic opportunity, whether you are still in your collegiate years or you are someone that knows somebody that might be good, that probably, again, didn't find a fraternity consultant on the chart when they were looking at potential jobs, now is the time to start thinking.
0:12:06.1 Adam Girtz: Scott, if someone is interested, or if someone is an advisor who's in a position of recommending someone, where might they reach out for more information?
0:12:19.8 Scott Smith: Absolutely, so a lot of information at www.sigmanu.org/employment from testimonials of previous staff members to get a detailed run-through on qualifications and benefits and skills learned and what a day in a life or a calendar of the year looks like for a consultant. For named advisor roles, we do send a solicitation each year to request referrals, but certainly if you've got one, you don't have to hang on and wait for an invitation. Headquarters@sigma.org is our generic email box and everything will get filtered over where it needs to. But we are always looking for good people. And to that point earlier, and each of you guys experienced this, a lot of it is about being encouraged or having a conversation, be it with an existing staff member or with a volunteer, with a fraternity sorority advisor or someone else to say, "Hey, you should consider this." And so we're happy to take the conversation from there, or even if folks want to anonymously refer people to us, we're happy to make the entreaty and let them know that, "Hey, you're on our prospect list," or "You're somebody that we want to recruit and have a conversation with because somebody else thinks you'd be good at this."
0:13:45.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah, absolutely. Well, as someone who came on staff under Scott Smith, I recommend it. The experience has been wonderful, developmental, and I absolutely recommend it. And I do actually recommend it nearly daily as a consultant and now a staff member to our collegians. So thanks, Scott, I appreciate that, especially because that is part of my job description, now you've made my job a little bit easier. [chuckle] So, hard segue, let's dive in. Let's talk about... Well, actually, wait, I did have a segue. Scott, you mentioned earlier the start of the new year and some exciting things that happen every year at the beginning of the year now. What is the most exciting thing that happens right at the beginning of the year for Sigma Nus anyway?
0:14:41.7 Scott Smith: Oh, so other than the silly cat calendar.
0:14:44.3 Adam Girtz: Other than the... [vocalization] "Happy New Year."
0:14:47.3 Scott Smith: Yeah. Oh, the ball drop, all those things. No, one of the most exciting things that we get to do at the very beginning of January is bring all of our collegiate Commanders together for an amazing networking and intensive training, and really a preparation for their term as CEO of their chapter, and it's something that we call the College of Chapters.
0:15:14.2 Adam Girtz: Yes, correct. [laughter] That's where I was going.
0:15:21.1 Scott Smith: Nailed it.
0:15:21.9 Adam Girtz: Nailed it. Scott, what is the College of Chapters, if someone had never heard of it before?
0:15:26.0 Scott Smith: Yeah, so the College of Chapters is the fraternity's intensive multi-day, at this point, annual conclave focused on the development of ethical leaders via the training of our collegiate chapter Commanders. So in Sigma Nu, we have two types of national conclaves. We have the Grand Chapter, which we had this last summer, and I know that you guys talked a lot about on the podcast. That's our legislative convention. It happens every two years, and it happens over the course of the summer. In our current format, every year at the start of the calendar year, we hold our other conclave and that is the College of Chapters. And so really, the purpose there is again to bring together from every collegiate chapter and colony, the newest highly elected leader in that group, and to help them navigate the amazing complexity that is fraternity.
0:16:35.7 Scott Smith: I don't know that any of us when we joined as first or second semester freshmen or sophomores or juniors, or even graduate students, could have imagined how much goes into running a successful, not just registered student organization, but for many of these, it's a property, it's a meal plan, it's student government, it's your residential learning community, it's your intramural squad, it's personal and professional development to the max. There's a lot that goes into that, between managing your money and your financial and your human resources, to navigating various policies, to how do you plan events, to, "What do I want to achieve that will live beyond me in this opportunity that I have to lead a group of like-minded, honorable men?" And that's a big, heavy weight. And when you look at an organization like fraternity where you have this constant churn, we are not the, take your pick, but the Shriners or the Chamber of Commerce or the Boy Scouts of America where you've got this long runway of initial membership or leadership pool.
0:18:02.3 Scott Smith: We're primarily focused on the collegiate experience, particularly at how folks join and how the operation gets up and running. And so you're looking at somewhere between a two and a four, maybe a five-year collegiate experience, and every year, the chapters are turning over their elected leadership. Some chapters maybe are even appointing specific positions semester to semester or quarter to quarter. That's different than when you start a new job, and it's something you hope you're going to be in for a while, or other than a startup type company, CEOs, they don't roll over on January 1st every year. The fact is in Sigma Nu, we have annual elections, and 85% to 90% of our collegiate chapters hold their election between November 1 and January 1. And so the idea with something like the College of Chapters is, A, we've got a natural break in the academic calendar; B, we've got this whole class of brand newly elected leaders, and there's a lot of stuff that even chapters that have, and I'm doing the air quotes here, kind of "figured it out" at the local level about how to do officer transitions.
0:19:21.5 Scott Smith: The fact is that they're college students, and it's a registered student organization club-type atmosphere, and it's different than going in and having an HR department for a professional job with a manual or a code of ethics or some other group that trains you on how to do that. And so there's a lot of stuff that falls under the Sigma Nu Fraternity with the capital F umbrella, kind of times when there is a way versus the way. What are the rules of the road? What are the places that you're likely to stub your toe? There are so many questions that our collegiate leaders get asked from the campus and from their own members that come up situationally. And a lot of our job at headquarters is to help them navigate how to find those answers.
0:20:19.9 Scott Smith: And so College of Chapter is kind of the antidote or the response to that. You've got a class of newly elected leaders, what can we do in that first 45, 60 days of their term to ensure that the rest of it is fruitful as possible? There's great learning that happens by experience or through mistakes, but if we can keep you from stubbing your toe which leads you to falling over because we did some initial training and visioning and mapping out of really what is a very short period that they're going to get to be in that elected role, then I think they're all the better for it, and the Fraternity is ultimately the better for it.
0:21:07.8 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, that's awesome. And for context, one of the reasons why we are doing this podcast episode now on this topic is, one, it's evergreen content, this is going to be a podcast we can reference to for alumni who are interested in learning more about College of Chapters in the future, or collegiate officers who are trying to figure out "What is this thing that I'm about to experience?" We can refer them to the podcast as well. But we're also celebrating, or recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the College of Chapters in its current model. I'll put some quotations around that because we'll come back to what that means in just a moment.
0:21:49.5 Christopher Brenton: But I did want to highlight that for some of our listeners, Scott, what you just described may sound entirely different than their experience with the College of Chapters. The College of Chapters has existed in some capacity since the 1950s, and so we have an entire generation of alumni who likely have grown up with something that looked very different than what the College of Chapters is today. If you could, just to provide that historical note, could you kind of explain how the College of Chapters has evolved from its inception to, and then we'll get a little bit more into this at the very end, what it is today?
0:22:26.8 Scott Smith: Yeah, it's a great point. While we did just cap off 10 successful years of the College of Chapters in its current format, as I mentioned earlier, this is a long-standing conclave of the Fraternity, so a national gathering that all chapters participate in. And so we could have similarly been celebrating 70 or 75 years of the larger, again, "College of Chapters", because that program has gone through various iterations throughout that period, and like you said, going back at least to the 1950s. And so it's morphed I think to meet the times and the needs of the Fraternity sometimes that is very specific items in the strategic plan or philosophy of the Fraternity at the time, but it has been a regional event, it has been a national event, it served in some years as a sort of caucusing or pre-convention opportunity for the various divisions or regions of the Fraternity in a lead-up to a Grand Chapter to wrestle with legislation in advance of the Grand Chapter or to nominate chapters or brothers for national awards.
0:23:54.3 Scott Smith: It has served an emerging leaders purpose in our most previous iteration. So it's kind of run the gamut in that respect, in terms of what kind of the experience may have looked like. You may have found yourself in Bloomington, Indiana, all on the campus of Indiana University, you might have fond recollections of you and six other chapters bunking down in a large chapter house that you had to drive 200 miles to get to because that was a group of folks that ran your division. So yeah, it definitely has changed, but it has all been under that banner of the College of Chapters.
0:24:39.0 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. It's funny, I can even date myself with the previous College of Chapters, I had the chance to attend, I think the last of the emerging leaders model. And so I attended as a first year member. A member of a colony at that time, Beta Tau Chapter had not yet been chartered or re-chartered and that experience with Riley University and kind of the... Almost like you created a chapter experience at the College of Chapters that kind of simulated what you might experience in a full calendar year. That curriculum was amazing, but it's very different than it is today.
0:25:23.0 Scott Smith: Yeah, so to frame it, I guess maybe in broader fraternity, sorority world parlance, it's... The model used for the 2000s, the 2001 to 2009 decade, effectively served as Sigma Nu's leadership school. Whereas the model that we have right now, which we'll come back to, is more of like your president's academy. But in the early 2000s, the Fraternity was operating under a philosophy for College of Chapters that if we can build great leaders, if we can give folks skill and expand their capacity and teach them the difference between positional leadership and ethical leadership that is based in the social change model and the seven C's, then they will be able to go out and draw other leaders to them and that will create a positive and successful fraternity experience. And so what we did starting in the summer of 2001, and every other summer from then, so an odd-numbered summers where your Grand Chapter was in your even-numbered summers, was we would bring two emerging leaders from each chapter and colony out to Lexington, Virginia.
0:26:52.2 Scott Smith: So that looks like a lot of times, LEAD Chairman or a rising sophomore or junior, somebody that is likely not yet become the Commander or the Lieutenant Commander of their chapter, but they can see... their chapter can see, we can see that they're on the path to something like that. And so literally they are flying into Roanoke and getting into a shuttle van and being driven up in the heat of the summer to the campus of Washington and Lee University to stay in what at the time where the old men's only dorm on Washington and Lee's campus, no air-conditioning, community bath. And so upon arriving, of course, all the students realize that there's no AC and they buy out the local Walmart, of the box fans and all the windows are cracked open. So coming to Lexington and going through an intensive three-and-a-half-day experience split between the campus of Washington and Lee University, and the historic founding place of Sigma Nu over at the Virginia Military Institute.
0:28:03.8 Scott Smith: And so some of the concepts even that we use now, and I imagine came from some of the previous iterations of the program, remain the same. Students went through some large group experiences. We had a series of keynote talks at those, meal functions, and then they were broken down probably about a quarter to a fifth of the assembled group which in that model, you're looking at about 250 students per summer, broken down into, say, groups of 50, and they're going through at that point, what is really new and emerging content from the LEAD program that had just been re-designed in '98 and was still ramping up. And so teaching a lot of that content about self-exploration and leadership and teamwork and conflict management, and living our values, really the root of the lead phase two curriculum is what the students would go through in kind of a, not full convention, but the larger group, 50 or so student experience, and then they would explore further and deeper and start to make practical applications to themselves in their own chapter, in what we would call small chapter groups, so groupings of chapters of like circumstance, close geographically similar in perhaps size or operational characteristics, 10 to 12 students that would be guided by a combination of a staff member and a volunteer faculty member.
0:29:44.6 Scott Smith: And we're eating in the cafeteria at Washington and Lee in some years. We had an event in the mess hall at VMI. There was some re-dedication to the founding principles out on the parade deck at VMI. And then Christopher, as you alluded to in the last two years of that program, so 2007 and 2009, we took a full day and created a campus-based immersive simulation where we took the entire audience of the College of Chapters and we broke them out into pseudo-collegiate chapters and they each had a profile, and we kind of threw the kitchen sink at them. What are all the things that you might face over the course of a year? We made them elect their own officers. They had to create a scholarship plan. I think in the 2009 year, we even had staff that would roam around on the campus, and they had to develop a recruitment strategy and try to win these folks over to join their team.
0:30:49.8 Scott Smith: They raised money, they went out of the community and raised money and competed against one another. Another key element of that emerging leaders-based program was a service element. And so prior to the campus simulation, we did a day of service in the Rockbridge County area as well. Awesome, awesome program. Amazing experience. I got to go as a student myself in 2003, and then got to serve as a young consultant carrying boxes and pointing directions and checking people in and tagging alongside a veteran to help lead some, a small group curriculum, and before you know it, 2007, here I am co-coordinating College of Chapters and I've had that hat to also wear on the staff side since then.
0:31:44.5 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome. I actually didn't even realize that the Riley University curriculum was even thinner slice in College of Chapter's history. I assumed it had lasted a lot longer. I just remember being in the simulation, of course, this is not real, but being detained and then tried by Duane Dreger, then Vice Regent and often Parliamentarian for the Fraternity, which was an incredibly intimidating experience. But it was incredible.
0:32:17.6 Scott Smith: Yeah, Riley was amazing. It really was an immersive simulation. It had a daily, I think it came out over a couple of hours, but like a daily newspaper about events that had happened in the simulation. Like you said, there were... Unfortunately, as it does happen in real life, chapters stub their toe. There is an allegation or an incident or an altercation, and they have to go through the university judicial process, or we have some plaintiff's attorney coming out and leading a press conference, alleging some misconduct or something like that. So yeah, it was a great time. And I think that the students really liked it. At some point, you may see the Fraternity spin off into something, like at Riley, it could be its own thing, but yeah, it was embedded in. And I'll tell you, hats off to Dave and Felicia Mainella, they did so much work with the lead program, but also really drove a lot of the curriculum and the philosophy around that model, but they also came up with that Riley concept. And if you've watched Draft Day, the movie, or even looked in on professionals... Like the war room that they ran for that simulation.
0:33:31.7 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, I can imagine. I just... It was just funny. I drew the chance card from Monopoly, I went straight to jail, and I did not collect $200. [chuckle]
0:33:43.4 Adam Girtz: It's really fun for me to hear the historical context on College of Chapters. I was a recent attendee of the new model. And I've heard of Riley University or the simulations and the different things that had been part of the historical models or the previous models of it but it's kind of cool to hear some of the... How that all actually worked. So speaking of... And I guess seeing some of those pieces of the historical model in the present model that I'm used to, that I think of when I think College of chapters, either as a participant or as a staff member, you're helping coordinate that, Scott, could you... You've touched on pieces of it, but could you briefly describe just the major components of the current model of the College of Chapters? There's a really great breakdown that happens at the beginning of College of Chapters for the participants, I think that would be beneficial for people to hear.
0:34:43.6 Christopher Brenton: And if I can add, it may be helpful to talk about the Strategic Plan changes as well, just because we have referenced that, and I think the 2010 shift with the adoption of the new Strategic Plan really was pivotal in its change.
0:35:00.0 Scott Smith: Absolutely. So you go back, the philosophy that I described for the early 2000s College of Chapters is really an ethical leadership, build more leaders and it will come philosophy, and that I believe is true, and I don't believe in any way is contrary or opposed to the other philosophy which is what the Fraternity adopted in 2010. This is the High Council led by past Regent Robert Durham and the introduction of the Fraternity to the obligation to excellence, and really a seismic shift in the Fraternity Strategic Plan set by the High Council in creating a new, what they call an imperative, but major focus area. What is the most important thing that we need to do? And that was in the creation of something called chapter strength, which really kind of boils down to Sigma Nu for each of... For the vast majority of us as an entry point as a collegiate experience. And we deserve in Sigma Nu and the Grand Chapter, at least everyone that I've been to, demands that we be a leading men's organization in North America.
0:36:31.7 Scott Smith: Never been to a Grand Chapter and they said, "Nah, mediocrity is okay," right? And so, Robert Durham reminded us of that in 2010. There's no honor in mediocrity. We have an obligation to excellence. And so they go through their strategic planning process and they come up with this new focus area called chapter strength, that Sigma Nu is going to equip and support its chapters in achieving organizational excellence. What does that look like, right? Beyond something like College of Chapters, I would say that Sigma Nu, in comparison to some of its counterparts or in terms of all the different ways you could approach it, we believe in sound operational practices. We believe that you have to be able to manage the nuts and the bolts, and you have to be able to execute in order for the intangibles of fraternity to have an opportunity to flourish, right?
0:37:28.0 Scott Smith: All of those things that folks, I think, would look back to about their own experience and what makes it great, the deep brotherhood and family-type relationships, the mentoring that they receive, the network that they were a part of, some of these amazing events that they did, or dollars that they raised and things like that. Very, very little of that is possible if you can't manage a roster and your finances and take your human resources and effectively deploy those and delegate, and you have a plan of where you're going, and that plan doesn't change every time the weather changes or every time you have the new cap poster/longest chapter meeting of the year, and we do elections. And so it's about if Sigma Nu is going to be on a campus, we're going to either come to a campus or exist and plant the flags, and we don't want to run with the pack, we don't want to look around and say that the average man here or the average fraternity experience is better than ours.
0:38:33.6 Scott Smith: We need to be leaders in that. So how do we, A, help our chapters understand what that looks like, but B, how do we give them the skills and the experience and some of the roadmaps to make that a reality on their campus? So that's kind of the charge that the council delivers. And so the staff look at some of the realities in the Fraternity at the time. Like I said before, 85% to 90% of our chapters having their elections between beginning of November and beginning of January. The fact that because of the dynamics I described earlier, collegiate chapters across the board, whether you're Sigma Nu or you're Beta Beta Beta, a sorority, no matter where in the country, they struggle with officer transitions, and particularly they struggle with the fraternity with the capital F stuff. What are the policies? How do we manage the roster? And there's not natural leadership and skill building that is happening as a part of the curriculum of most campuses for your freshman, your sophomore, or even your junior year. Very few people take a course on ethical leadership or delegation, or how to set a strategy, or how you create a culture of accountability.
0:39:56.9 Scott Smith: And so what we did was, to start, we identified, what are the competencies, the knowledge, skills, behaviors, that no matter where your chapter, Southern California, Southern Florida, Southern Maine, how old you might be, how big you might be, what are those core competencies that every one of our CEOs, our collegiate Commanders needs to have in order to successfully lead his chapter? And so we started to build this new College of Chapters model around that. What are those core competencies? We looked at what were some of the most impactful and powerful sessions from the LEAD program, be it something like accountability or living our values, what were some of the most powerful pieces from the previous College of Chapters' iteration and what was new content that we needed to create to develop an experience that is really unique in Sigma Nu? The College of Chapters is unlike anything else that we do.
0:40:58.0 Scott Smith: A lot of folks have been to a Grand Chapter, or can at least in their mind think about, "Okay, I'm going to go to a legislative conference," right? Well, the fact is something like a Grand Chapter is really a one-group experience, like we all go to the opening reception together, we all go to the kick-off, we all go to the awards dinner, we all go to the business sessions. If you're an alumnus, maybe you get invited to a special reception here and there, and then there's also a thin slice of students and alumni that serve in a volunteer role as a committee, and they might have some during the day or after hours. But largely, we're all going to the same thing, it's one big celebration, but also working experience. The College of Chapters, it has elements of that. We each year go through a program of three to five key notes, just top-shelf messaging from our alumni that have been there, that have done it in their personal lives, in their communities, in their business lives, as well as outside experts that come in and give some of these overarching messages about leadership and ethics and our responsibility in today's world, or a historical context of the founding of our fraternity and what was happening on the campus of VMI.
0:42:18.9 Scott Smith: So we all do that together. We all eat together. We all go on a pilgrimage to Lexington together, which I love about this new model. The first time we were able to pull this off was actually January 2012. So you get the marching orders in the summer of 2010, it takes about a year to build it out, and then because of the time from we selected... We did the first two years in St. Louis in this model. I don't know that... Adam, I don't think you were on the team for those. Christopher, you may have been. But St. Louis, awesome city, central location, easy for everybody to get to, but it didn't have that Lexington factor that was a part of the previous College of Chapters. So few people just happened to wander their way organically up 81 or across 64 and find themselves in the birthplace of Sigma Nu. If you haven't been at headquarters, it's really cool. I know that's probably a whole different episode, but…
0:43:16.6 Adam Girtz: Christopher, write that down, write that down. [chuckle]
0:43:18.0 Scott Smith: To be able to add that experience though to something like the College of Chapters for all of our Commanders to not only go to business school, to learn how to be a CEO, but also to really, to root that in the founding of fraternity and the mission of fraternity today and we have an amazing property, and them just to get to see that and be added to the roles of folks who have done that. So we do all that stuff together. But we have these six high-level topics that we need to take all of our Commanders through to address those competencies. We teach them about vision and leadership, night one, emanating in an elevator pitch that they deliver about the future of their chapter, like "What is going to be achieved by the end of my term or over the next 18 months?" The next morning, we kick off with how to convert that vision to a strategy. If I can define where I want to go, where am I really at now and how do I draw the roadmap to get from A to B? What are the big things I need to do to achieve that? They learn about roster and finance.
0:44:21.3 Scott Smith: They learn about how to set real actionable goals and how to break those out among their committees and the delegation skills that are necessary. We talk about Sigma Nu policy and finance. It's not... Those necessary work we gotta do and got to do right to allow us to do the work we want to do topic. And then we get into accountability and some of the structures that are specific to Sigma Nu in that. They do that in larger groups, 40 to 50 students of similar size and similar context, your big 10 sitting right alongside your big 12 and your SEC, compared to perhaps some of your smaller chapters in the Midwest or the northeast. 'Cause some of those conversations are a little bit different. What does budgeting look like for a chapter of 250 versus a chapter of 25? Or how do you mobilize your members into committees if you are dealing with everybody who has an officer position versus I've got... How am I going to have 25 people in every committee? So trying to right-size and fit those conversations.
0:45:33.4 Scott Smith: Where College of Chapters, I think really has some of its great payoff though, is in the small chapter groups. You're sitting around with eight, nine, 10 other guys that you can reach out and call throughout your term and they're going through the same things that you're going through because they're on a campus, they're in a chapter that's very much just like yours. And the best practice showing in the networking that happens in those small group experiences, I think are top-notch. But the final level of College of Chapters where this is totally different, you cannot follow the crowd, you cannot trust that the guy that you sat next to on the bus or in every other session, is that we make sure to address for these Commanders as they're coming into their term, what are the issues that your chapter has most recently faced? The Fraternity's annual assessment program, the Pursuit of Excellence helps chapters identify where they are and whenever they're not meeting the fraternity standards, we place those chapters into specific educational sessions to confront them with that reality, but help them create a plan to that not be a stumbling block for their term.
0:46:44.8 Scott Smith: And for our chapters that that is not an issue, they're able to self-select from a set of other elective sessions on various skills or leadership-type topics, strengths and weaknesses, emotional intelligence, mental health, those types of things. One of the really cool elements that fits in at that level of the College of Chapters though that I really like about this model that we have right now is that every student that comes gets placed into a session to get one-on-one coaching, specific coaching for their chapter for, be it their... What they're learning and going through in the program about creating their vision or building out their goals or walking away with their action plan for their term, or just some question or issue that they have that they want to get some outside perspective on. We bring an amazing volunteer faculty team to College of Chapters every year to be side by side with our staff.
0:47:42.1 Scott Smith: Our staff is a little bit better at the daily nuts and bolts of running a collegiate fraternity chapter, but the men that come and support this program and take time away from work and family to show the benefits and the reasons for lifetime engagement, and to talk about how... What they're learning at College of Chapters is not Sigma Nu-specific stuff. [chuckle] It's kind of a management crash course that they might similarly get when they get into their first supervisory role outside of college, but how that plays out, whether it be from their perspective as a house corporation president or advisory board member or a division Commander, or a small business owner or a regional manager for a multinational or something like that.
0:48:34.9 Scott Smith: So it's a really cool program that kind of runs folks through those variety of experiences to walk in saying, "I think I know what I'm doing and why I was elected," to "Wow. I didn't know what I didn't know, but now I'm leaving and I've got a plan to be able to take back and talk to my executive committee and my pledge class and my big and my little brother and build a coalition among the chapter to say, 'Hey, guys, let's go there and let's go there together, and here's how we can make that happen.'" And they understand all the things that might hang them up, or again, the difference between when you can pick a way versus just, there's the way, and that's how you do things. So that's what we hear a lot from the students reflectively through an evaluation or folks that you interact with after the program.
0:49:32.4 Scott Smith: It's not so much that we taught them all the answers. We taught them to know what kind of questions were going to come and where to find the answers, and they got to practice on their own without the demands and the polls of, it's the middle of the semester, or I'm surrounded by my brothers and I don't know what they're going to think of like, "What do I want and what can we become?" and a structure to go back and have that conversation and come to agreement amongst the group, to really start with that why. What is our purpose? What are we trying to accomplish? And then get back out to the, "Well, what kind of t-shirt does that mean that we need to have?"
0:50:16.3 Christopher Brenton: Scott, so just to emphasize this, so Commanders at the conclusion of College of Chapters have created a vision for their chapter, for many of our groups, it's "I want to be... I want our chapter to become a Rock Chapter, and so here is my vision for how we accomplish that." They've got strategies for accomplishing that vision, and they've got goals to help them realize those strategies, coming out of College of Chapters, I imagine for a lot of those men, it's a pretty intimidating task ahead of them of like, "Hey, I've got this... " Almost... It's like drinking from a fire hose. I've got all of this information that I'm trying to regurgitate to my chapter. I've got this plan that they were not present for when I was creating it. How do I build a coalition that's going to help me accomplish this goal? What does the Fraternity do post-College of Chapters to help with execution and making sure that our chapters are set up, and hint, hint, this is a little bit of a segue to talk about an upcoming program that we've got on the horizon.
0:51:24.6 Scott Smith: Yeah, and I'll take that bait, but before I do, I would say even kind of arriving at College of Chapters, you walk down the stairs into the north entry foyer there at the Hotel Roanoke and you're greeted by the team of staff to check you in. We give you... We give you the keys at that moment. They get... I think this year's manual was 126 pages. It's a beautiful, colorful workbook. But College of Chapters is really about training the trainer, right? There's not one man that's going to decide where we're going to go. And the Commander is not responsible for all the different things that I just talked about; updating the roster or setting the budget and things like that. But as the Commander, questions and complaints go up, right? [chuckle] And your responsibility is kind of an umbrella over the chapter. And so that's the audience that we have and we're going to teach them everything that the chapter would need, but also giving them all the information.
0:52:29.0 Scott Smith: A lot of the talking points that we use, all of the schematics and visuals down to copies of the PowerPoints that we go through in the different videos or presentations we might show, the students get all of that on day one, and we kind of beat them over the head with it of like, this is a lot, it is a fire hose, right? The stuff that they put into the manual in terms of building out that action plan is some of the greatest content there, but they get to take all of that with them. And we follow up the students shortly after landing or pulling into the driveway at home, or getting a page from us about, "Here is how you take this back," and you follow on with that a couple of weeks after the event, we ping them again with a copy of their action plan and we share that out with their advisors so that they can help them have those conversations, providing the advisors as well with talking points to help the students process the College of Chapters experience and what this big task is that they have to go out and teach their chapter but also to help guide them to that new and better place.
0:53:40.6 Scott Smith: The complementary piece of that though, because again, the reality of our chapters having a massive officer transitions around this time of year, and there being some struggles or disconnects at the local level, it's not all remedied by just two and a half days with the Commander. And so the Fraternity recognizes that, and going back to about 2008, has really tried to combat that through a program we call the Sigma Nu Institute. Sigma Nu Institute, kind of like College of Chapters, has been through multiple iterations, but at its peak was a one-day drive-in event that we were doing on 14 campuses across the country between the end of January and the end of February. It is designed as an afternoon program where some number of officers outside of the Commander, executive and other officers in charge of major programs in the fraternity, lead and recruitment or candidate education, would come together, and again, similarly, learn those nuts and bolts and key policies and practices, but where we can lay over top and some of the greatest hits, if you will, [chuckle] of the College of Chapters, to have that consistent message to introduce them to the Golden Circle, which is something that we talk about.
0:55:05.1 Scott Smith: Simon Sinek's Starting With Why, understanding why, what your vision and your purpose is, and then getting out into how are we going to make that happen, and then the end results of the actual goals and action items, or yes, we did raise X dollars, or the t-shirt has a pocket or whatever, those being at the very outer level and the last things that we focus on, introducing the other officers to those kinds of concepts. Last year, we were able to expand the College of Chapters... Or excuse me, the Sigma Nu Institute program, to be a national program by doing it virtually. Whereas my typical framework for our in-person program is that most vehicles in the United States have five seat belts in them, and so we're going to try and to invite five people to come, one car to drive over to a common campus and spend the afternoon with us. But that's limiting, right? You've got to be in driving proximity to one of the sites. Even if we do 14, we have some chapters that are on geographic islands. This is the way that higher education institutions in the US population is laid out. Yeah, Adam's waving from Des Moines there, right?
0:56:16.8 Adam Girtz: Our North Dakota chapter, to get to anywhere is a trek. [chuckle]
0:56:23.6 Scott Smith: Yeah, so there's limitations there. There's limitations because again, how many seat belts do we have, or how many facilitators can we fly out or something like that? A virtual national program peels away those obstacles. Pick your dates. We're offering multiple sessions. Come to the one that fits for you, regardless of if that's the one that works for your roommate or not, right? 'Cause you guys aren't driving anywhere. Any chapter in the country can come because it's all presented from the convenience of your laptop. And so we were able to expand a program that was three breakout tracks for five officers to a program that is 10 breakout tracks for 11 or 12 different officer positions.
0:57:07.4 Scott Smith: And so we're going to be doing that model again this year because of those benefits. We've got two programs that we're going to offer this year at the end of January, as well as a companion volunteer alumni-specific training program. But it's... I love the virtual opportunity because it can be really an all-comers, right? "Hey, I'm the Recruitment Chairman, I want to go to this institute thing. I've got a committee, can they come too?" Bring them on, man. "Hey, I'm thinking about running for Treasurer, would this be helpful for me?" Maybe our chapter actually does spring elections. Absolutely, right? "Hey, I'm the, whatever, the candidate class advisor for our advisory board, would it be good for me to go to the student program and learn what the Candidate Marshal's learning?" Of course it would. So we have that kind of capacity to be able to offer that and to be able to offer it in a tight afternoon type window. We're not talking about an eight-series class here or a nine-week commitment, four hours on a Saturday afternoon, and you're going to get a huge dose of what you need to be successful in your term from the outset.
0:58:23.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. And I would just say if you are an officer who is listening to this right now, as the podcast drops, or right when the podcast drops, I should say, we're going to have registration coming up for that and would love for you to attend. As Scott also mentioned, if you're listening to this in 2025, possible that the Sigma Nu Institutes have changed, their format's changed, but likely, very likely that the Sigma Nu Institutes exists in some capacity and are likely coming up if we're talking about you listening to this in January, any other time of year, the Sigma Nu Institutes are usually taking place at the end of January, early February. So be on the lookout for those institutes during your officer cycle or officer term, if you are a collegiate office or collegiate member, and as an alumnus, especially keep your ears and eyes open for information about the volunteer tracks to make sure you are receiving the benefits of that institute as well.
0:59:22.2 Scott Smith: Well, and to speak to timing and a train the trainer type model here, the institute... Find the sun line, right? Backslash institute. Because there's a rich and deep participant manual there. There are going to be similarly copies of slides and things like that. So if you're listening to this and you're like, "Oh, I just missed the live event," there's still something there for you that will approximate that. It's not the same certainly as going side by side with the other students or advisors that are going through the live version, but do not despair, we have resources and assistance for you as well.
1:00:04.0 Adam Girtz: Awesome. Well Scott, thank you so much for spending some time with us today and for sharing just the smallest of doses of what the true College of Chapters experience is every year. And I know I feel I could speak for the staff when I say this, it charges me up. Seeing the spark light up in someone's eye in a coaching and best practices session where they apply something they learned in a core session, and all of a sudden it clicks like, "Oh, I can... My chapter can do this," or you're seeing someone writing out a vision and being told, "Go big with it. This is your opportunity to... You set your intentions for what you want to see in your chapter," and to see them, you start to imagine what they can accomplish is a really awesome experience. So yeah, if we could share just a little bit of that with our listeners, I think we've succeeded today. Again, Scott, thank you so much for being with us. Anything else you'd like to plug, or any final thoughts about anything before we wrap off here?
1:01:20.4 Scott Smith: I would just plug... If you're a Sigma Nu that is looking to make a difference and be involved as a volunteer in your collegiate officer role, again, we have resources for you. The staff is a big one. But also every one of our officers has a resource page with a rich and thick user guide to help them answer those questions when they come. We've got the best practices library, all of those types of things. So we are here to help our Sigma Nus be wildly successful, and that's what we want. And I'm amped up. As you said, Adam, this is an exciting time of the year. I could almost hear all of those action plans unfurling as folks got home at the end of last week and got ready to start having some bold conversations with their brothers about what we can achieve this year. We had 150-some-odd students that braved through a winter storm to get to Roanoke this year, and if just those complete the six goals that they set, how many hundreds of intangible improvements will our chapters face? And I know it'll be much more than that, but even that as a starting point, I think we feel real good about the future of Sigma Nu.
1:02:35.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah. You said... When you said Commanders are leaving with a plan, no, literally, they are leaving with a giant poster in a tube that is their action plan that they are going back. It's always funny to me leaving out of Roanoke Airport and you can see these giant tubes poking out of a bunch of guys' bags, it's like, "Oh, there's all our participants, they're all leaving." [chuckle] Well, Christopher, any final thoughts?
1:03:02.4 Christopher Brenton: The only thing I would add is, for our more visually inclined listeners, we will put a hyperlink to actually our photo albums from the most recent College of Chapters in the show notes, and so if you're listening along and you're like, "I need context for what Scott's talking about, or would love a visual aid," we'll have all of that ready for you in the show notes. You can go scroll through the albums to see just the participants going through that experience. And I think you can... I feel like when I look at the pictures, I can really get a sense of how important those interactions are in building a sense of shared community amongst our officers. They know they're supported, they know that they have the support of the national organization, and then they can go out and do this work to really create amazing chapter experiences for all of our collegiate members.
1:04:00.1 Adam Girtz: Thanks, Christopher. Everyone, that was Scott dropping the mic. He's out. He's done. He has delivered an excellent, excellent interviewee experience for all of our listeners. Again, Scott, thank you so much for being with us. And that is the Gavel Podcast. This feels weird because we don't... We aren't going to have a bumper on the back end of this. This is the end of an interview and the end of the episode. Christopher, how do we do this? Am I doing it right?
1:04:28.2 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, we'll just keep our standard closing going. And I think our listeners will be able to follow along even without that mid-session or mid-episode bumper music.
1:04:42.2 Adam Girtz: Yeah. [chuckle] Thanks everyone for listening. We will see you next month on the Gavel Podcast.
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