welcome everyone to the alpha limited Delta info session my name is Eileen murberg and I'm the executive director of alpha Lambda Delta we are headquartered in the Rochester New York area where I am right now and helping me today is a student member um Carly Barker can you introduce yourself hey I'm Corley Barker um so I just I'm one of the investigators basically I'm going to be helping out today so can you say I love it where what's where are you a member okay I am a member at Arkansas State University and I am our public relations okay for your chapter yes for my chapter right okay well um so uh as I said that we said in the emails um this is a general info session your chapters might be doing their own info sessions but this is one hosted by the student ambassadors and the ald headquarters um just to answer questions and tell you a little bit about Alpha lamba Delta you're all currently in what we call open invitation groups for your school you're from all over um one of the first things speaking of where you're from is that we do drawings of these um for about we do like three or four sometimes five Amazon gift cards um a random drawing from attendance and so the way we pick a name if you wanna um enter to win uh is put your school in chat uh so what school are you from and make sure that I I did this the other day and I um I didn't couldn't find the the student's name so just make sure that it's your name and you know when you're um as you name yourself and zoom make sure that that's your name um so that I can find you and find your email if you do win uh so if you do want to enter to win in our drawing um put your school name in chat so we get a good idea of where you're from as well um so we're not going to take a long time um just tell you a little bit about FL Lambda Delta probably answer a lot of questions that um I would anticipate you have because we've heard a lot of the same types of questions so um let's get started thanks everybody I see lots of Maryland Purdue great they're going too fast a lot of Purdue and a lot of Maryland Cincinnati Texas Austin great uh Southern California I think Texas Arlington good good good okay um so real quickly uh we are um obviously a National Honor Society our there's a lot of Honor societies probably a lot on your campuses and a lot of them tend to be major based you get invited to them when you do really well in your major but Alpha Lambda Delta is interdisciplinary so open to all majors and our Niche is first year and that doesn't mean you're only a member first year but that your eligibility is based on your first semester our mission is to encourage economic achievement um to help you even continue that not required that you continue um with that GPA that you got but uh but you're encouraged um so that's sort of our Global Mission and we'll talk a little bit more dig a little bit deeper into that so we've been around a long time next year is our Centennial we're almost 100 years old pretty excited about that we're all over the country technically we have 400 chapters but about 300 are active so it Ebbs and flows sometimes um and we induct about 20 000 students every year and we are certified I'm going to talk in a minute about legitimacy and there's I know that questions come up like is this a scam like is this legit we get that we hear that uh we are legit we are certified by the Association of college honor societies um and we have been since 1938 so they set pretty strict standards for what an Honor Society is and I'll talk a bit about that but at its most basic is 3.5 GPA year per semester congrats because you all did that um minimum Less in your fall fall semester in your first semester not an easy thing to do so uh great job we are going to tackle head-on the question of of funds and fees and dues uh just know I'll just tease it now by saying that there's um the alpha Linda Delta National dues are thirty dollars um which is pretty low uh considering when I've seen other uh on our organizations charged but you were you were probably told that your fee was more than that and that's because um for all of you the chapters added on uh unamount at their discretion so it might be 5.10 20 30 whatever it is that's all money that stays at the chapter level and I'll have Carly speak about that in a minute for what that money goes towards and then I know that there's a couple um unique chapters here that also have another Honor Society uh attached to them which is called phytosigma or PES um some are joint and some you have a choice for Purdue it's a joint chapter so your fee I think is 80 or 90 or something because you're getting membership in another Honor Society so we won't spend a whole lot of time on that other group this is really just focused on Alpha Linda Delta um but it applies to all of you no additional fees we'll talk more about that so I'm going to skip over this one because we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about it but um certainly lots of benefits um and again I'll I will pull you in Carly to talk about benefits um and at a minimum you get a certificate and pin if you're one of those joint chapters you get two certificates and two pins um Carly can you talk a little bit about Arkansas State's induction ceremony so the other thing about what's nice is every Honor Society has an induction ceremony and it's a really lovely event you don't have to go you're not required to attend if you can't make it but it's really nice does Arkansas have one okay so since I've been a part of ald we haven't had one yet but we are going to be doing one this year um for the first time I guess in a while or first time ever so I'm actually super excited about it but it's gonna be a lot like whenever you go on stage you get a certificate um it's gonna be a really awesome event so yeah yeah and that as you all can I'm sure understand uh covet and the pandemic has had really like sort of um discontinued all in-person ceremonies um so that I know you know that from other events so a lot of Ceremonies were online um some still are uh some chapters choose to have it on Zoom um but most are going back to in person and they're really nice events families can come and you're really honored with um like I said with a lot of attention with the certificate have been that you get there's often food at the events so if you have questions about your ceremony I can answer at the end and particular okay so let's just jump right into what we know or the commonly asked questions or myths or beliefs um the first one I do I don't hear this as much anymore because I hope you feel like it's a big deal that you did well like just as I said before it's not easy to come out of high school for most of you who came straight from high school to your colleges and did really well freshman year is notorious for us are being tough that a tough transition um very different from high school so uh it is a big deal and again our founding was on the premise of celebrating that and that's a milestone and something worth um you know celebrating and recognizing um I think I mentioned this earlier alluded to it so a myth is that you have to maintain that whatever your GPA was our minimum is three five it is not true that you have to maintain that again you're going to be encouraged to and um you'll be provided a lot of resources to help you with that if that's the goal of yours is to maybe graduate with a cumulative three five that's great but you don't get kicked out of l400 Delta you don't lose membership in any way if your GPA drops below that um once you're a member you're a member for life and that doesn't that nobody can take that away from you um Carly anything you want to say about the first two things the grades in general and support for maintaining it how your chapter sort of functions along those lines yes so especially starting this year like I said our chapter is kind of getting back into the swing of things we're gonna have like study nights and we're also going to bring in um other teachers professors around to talk about what we can do to really help with our GBA and help keep our great stuff awesome great good to hear a huge um question or a comment I guess I should say question I hear all the time is you guys are really busy so you've done really well so academics are important to you and you you spend a lot of time maybe on academics maybe you have a part-time job a full-time job internships um you're in in Real Sports or you're on a sports athletic team uh lots of other clubs and organizations so pretty busy today students we know are busy so I do hear a lot like I just this is not just one more thing I can't take on I can't take out one more thing and what's required and how many meetings do I have to go to and the answer is none uh so there are no time requirements again encouraged to there will be events I know I can see the chapters that you're in um Cincinnati Maryland Purdue Cal Poly Trinity um Southern California Texas Austin yeah those are active chapters and they're going to do some things on campus they're going to be events and fun things and academic things service projects meetings all sorts of things but you are not going to be required to go to anything so if you're thinking now you just don't have the time and you don't want to commit to just one more thing just know that some students just join just to have it on the resume so Carly I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about this one how to do when you first got invited did you think that maybe there were some time requirements or commitments to it um yes I really didn't know exactly what it was my chapter was little to non-existent whenever I first joined so I was like there's no way this is real I thought it was a scam all of those things um but uh sorry could you like say that question again I think yeah just um yeah time time like did you feel also like um that it was going to take too much time and does it take a lot of time well you're involved like if you're an officer so just know for everyone here in the audience you know not everyone's going to be a chapter officer or a leader you don't have to be but when you when you are it is going to take more time so go ahead so I do plan our social events for our chapter so obviously that is going to take up a little bit more time but that's because I want to do those things but if you don't want to be you know super involved you don't have to go to all these different required events it's really just kind of up to you how involved you want to be and what you want to make out of it yeah good the only other thing I'll say about time and I won't belabor it is that um you might you know Alpha and the Delta is a lifetime membership like you you are only invited your first year right now you're not gonna get invited again like the invitation is only based on your fall grades so um now is your chance but it's a lifetime so you might not have time right now you might have a really busy spring semester you're just packed but your time's gonna change so next year you might find your life is very different that maybe you're you've gotten used to college courses you're better at learning at learning you know you've learned how to learn you're better at your classes maybe your hours drop for work or whatever it is that could change your time commitment so next year the year after your senior year and you might find you have more time that you wanna um go to events and and uh meetings and events of the chapter um so just know that things get change for you so enough about time uh let's talk about money time and money um why should I have to pay you know it's got to be a scam if they charge you money uh so obviously not um we think because uh every membership organization in every Honor Society is going to have a membership fee and that's for a couple reasons number one is they're all run by a National Organization where you get National benefits that you don't get from any other club you're joining fraternities with sorority is a very similar some club sports like the club sports has equipment they have to buy so there's a membership fee to join so membership fees are not red flags really they are they can be very legitimate um so nationally remember that the fee and Carly I'm going to call on you to give some examples if you could about expenses for the local chapter but nationally you get the certificate the pin a couple things I'm going to mention soon is our leadership development program where we have a certificate series you can opt into and self-paced take leadership courses um and be certified as a leader a career development resources perks and discounts I'm going to talk in a minute about our Perks program which is going to save you a lot of money if you use it and it's going to pay for your fee many times over um so we offer a lot at that National level for thirty dollars lifetime no reoccurring fees remember when I said that anything above 30 is other chapter that that's all money that goes to the chapter or to fight a sigma if you're a joint chapter um so Carly what do you know what your fee is offhand that not to put you on the spot but what's Arkansas State's speed yeah so ours is about forty dollars it's really not that much more expensive than the national fees I believe it just goes towards Accord and it's not super expensive either because our University gives us a pretty large budget for first year experience which goes towards like ald oh okay so that's another yeah I didn't know that that's good yeah so sometimes that extra money above the 30 if it's 10 yeah that it might get you an honor cord that you can wear graduation sometimes I know Purdue gets a t-shirt um so there's a lot of other things you might get at the local level um and one of the things Carly I know and I don't know if this is the case with Arkansas but one of the biggest things that I hear they spend the money on in addition to those items you all get is food so there's usually a lot of food at events so you could you will make you know you'll eat a lot of meals that'll pay for that fee as well uh do you guys have food at your events there's always food yes and that is usually covered by that first year experience budget so our advisor is always like whatever you guys want on the fees um there are a few waivers if somebody was um truly in need talk to your advisor about that or they can maybe do a discount they don't do um payment plans but they could do a discount or or a full fee waiver if there was need but your advisor has to um do that but again so I guess the question is is it worth it so what what's your fee um is it 40 50 60 um whatever it is do you feel like it for a lifetime of benefits that's worth it to you and you know that's a question for you to answer Carly anything you want to say about that I I'm gonna assume it was worth it for you because you got involved yes um so again I really didn't know exactly what all I could do last year to get involved but my advisor picked me and Zoe that you were talking about who is also an ambassador now to go to our national conference and it really just changed our view over everything and we were able to see all the amazing benefits that ald has to offer like the internships at the national level the conference internship the Ambassador programs all the scholarships available to us I would truly feel like it is definitely worth it good yeah and I can't even believe when I said what the national fee covers that I didn't mention scholarships like we give well so we're we're a non-profit charitable organization so the money we charge that thirty dollars I mean I'm running a National Organization with hundreds of chapters and 20 000 students every year so we're trying to provide as much as we can to you at the lowest price but one of the biggest things we offer is is scholarships so I mean not everybody gets one but not as many people apply to them as you'd think um so everybody here if you do join make sure you apply to our scholarships um we give out about two hundred and eleven thousand dollars every year and then chapters give out local scholarships at a tune of another hundred thousand I know Southern California I think you're here um they uh they give out a lot of money in local scholarships again there is no reoccurring fee that's something to be careful about with other organizations um which is on my next slide I think which you can't get to let's see uh the scam question um I'll get to that in a second but uh fraternities authorities obviously we get that a lot like I don't want to join the fraternity sorority and you guys sound like one um back in the day 200 years ago every all these groups always got Greek names right so we sound like we're sharing sorority but we're not um so we're very much not a social Greek letter organization even though we share Greek letters in our name but that's how it went those you know many years ago and you know I think one of the myths is because if you do know fraternity and sorority life you know that when you do Join one that's it for life you don't join another fraternity you don't join another sorority you pick one they pick you you pick them and that's it for life not the case with honor organizations just so you know and social fraternities business fraternities those are all different and you could join as many as you want of those remember I said your major once you do well in your major you're going to get invited to your Majors Honor Society so look out for that if your chapter or if your school has a chapter you can join multiple groups Carly do you um belong to any other what other organizations do you belong to okay so um besides Alpha Lambda Delta I am in a sorority I'm an Alpha Gamma Delta I'm also involved with our College ministry here it's called 747. I'm involved um I'm involved in a lot of things really I just off the top of my head um anyways there's a few other organizations oh sorry volunteer ice day which is like our volunteer organization on campus we provide volunteer opportunities to other people on campus and I also work a lot with our on-campus food pantry so oh cool yeah so you are busy yeah yes okay so um you know I I don't want to belabor the scam thing we obviously don't think we are one uh we again pretty established and I I can tell you that I'm very familiar with a lot of the other organizations and and unfortunately there are some sketchy ones out there I'm not going to name names especially because I'm recording this um but I'm not gonna name uh specific organizations but um I think the message here is to just do your homework because I would just be careful about some organizations you might get invited to or already have been invited to there's a couple things you could look for um to sort of see if they are legitimate um are they certified by achs uh which I mentioned earlier we are and have been since 1938 um but do they have a presence on campus do they have chapters around the country and are they active and led by students like Carly like do they actually have activities or is it just a company that that wants to get your money do they have an actual office or is it like a P.O box and some you know post office where they're just collecting checks uh look for that if they have like a home office and are they governed by a board of directors are they a non-profit charitable organization um do they have the last thing I'll mention first scam organizations is do they even have academic criteria that's something to look for we're very very strict with our standards um but I know a lot of organ a few organizations just do blanket emails to millions of college students uh to give you this honor of being invited but they're nobody's checking grades there was nobody looking you met the high grade standards because you're you were invited if you got one um but talk to your friends who might have a you know lower GPA they got invited to uh Carly did you get invited to other sketchy organizations when you're a freshman yes I don't even remember what they were but I got invited to a few other ones that definitely did not seem legitimate how did you know what what like what made you think Alpha Linda Delta was I mean at first it was I went to the National website I was like okay this is real okay yeah yeah I mean that's basically it just do your homework um Google everybody look them up um see what uh see what comes up for you um I don't think you'll find scam uh next to Alpha Linda Delta and if you do let me know that's what I'd like to know um you know we've talked about this you know you don't have to get involved you don't have to go to anything so well then what benefit do you get if you don't get involved so um because you do get I think Carly could probably attest you get a little bit added benefit if you do get involved if you go to events obviously you're learning something or you're winning some prize at some event or having food at an event like there's an advantage to going to something but if you don't if you straight up just like never go to any event it's still I think worth it because it's a line in your resume um that you're all probably going to have a section on your resume for awards and recognitions maybe that's a category and Alpha Lambda Delta could be one on that list or maybe the first one on that list of many um we're known uh you know because we've been around so long I've talked with employers who when they see it on the resume um it's going to mean something to them um so it has benefits even if you don't go to anything um and the last one on this slide is a common question your membership follows you so wherever you go uh it's not tied to your University so it's once you join it's your membership if you transfer to a school that has another chapter of ald you'll let us know and we can connect you to that chapter you'll find them or just let us know so we can change your record um at the national office uh and then if you go somewhere without a chapter uh you would be added to what we call our national chapter this is only if you let us know this um you can be added to our national chapter just to stay in the loop about things um and maybe you can help us start a chapter at your University while we don't have one because that's we're always looking to expand um okay uh Carly anything you want to say I'm just gonna this is from our website I just screenshot our website just to show some of the quick quick overview of some of the key benefits nationally anything you want to say on these Carly I'm not sure if you're familiar with any of the three um I've definitely applied for a scholarship already I applied for the tro undergraduate um just to help with a financial assistance obviously so there is a few other options and I'm sure you could talk on more um but besides these three benefits you also get that sense of community from joining so um that's another really great thing I've found through my chapter awesome that's great yeah yeah so I mentioned the leadership program that's a certificate series um you could be nationally certified leader self-paced you could take the next four years like there's no time limit it's not like you have to do it uh and it's not a huge time commitment um but uh that's just a unique benefit and then I mentioned that perks this is a unique Alpha Lambda Delta thing you opt into it it's an app on your phone it's going to offer like literally 300 000 perks and discounts on pizza and local restaurants and oil changes and health and wellness products um movie tickets like discounts and free stuff that pays for itself pays for your membership fee I think many times over if you use it it's called a healthy perks comes with membership but part of your membership um we offer a lot of career development stuff trying to connect uh alumni who've done well based on Majors we've got a lot of webinars we do on that um this is a unique uh um benefit uh this is legit like you actually get if you ever work for the federal government uh and show that you're an alpha Lambda Delta you're automatically upgraded instead of starting at a GS5 you started gs7 which is more pay and then we talked about the resume piece um what kinds of service activities does your chapter participate in apparently do they do community service in the in their neighborhood or what's that look like yeah so a lot of our stuff does correlate with our on-campus food pantry I feel like that's our biggest service project that a lot of our restaurant organizations help with so just last week our Alpha Lambda chapter helped clean and reorganize our food pantry oh good okay so yeah all sorts of different things we offer a theme every year and this year's theme is refugees um and last year it was food and food insecurities year before was sustainability or animals or something so we just do a theme every year um okay so just a couple quick specific things and then we'll wrap it up and answer any questions you have um back to leadership and leadership's not for everybody like you might not have an interest in I mean I would strongly encourage you to for any career you're going into having enhanced leadership skills can really help you um so we do offer a summit that is free for everybody who joins um it's once a semester the next one is Sunday April 23rd uh so keep on the lookout for that if you do join uh and then Carly mentioned our conference so we do an in-person conference once a year I'm going to be honest in all transparency not every student can go to this like it does tend to be the ones a little bit more involved so this might not be your thing but I'm going to mention anyway it's a different city every year you meet students from all over the country um Carly anything you want last year it was Tampa Florida it's always in October you anything you want to say about the conference um yeah it was actually really awesome to get to go and meet other people from different chapters I didn't really know exactly what it would be like but it was really awesome to just um connect with other people utilize different ideas that we can take back to our own chapters yeah good that's exactly what we've opened um we've talked a little bit about campus involvement again you don't have to but there's going to be a lot of opportunity service academic support how to you know there might be a session that your chapter does on scholarships like not just ald scholarships but you guys are high achieving students and you are exactly what a lot of scholarship funders are looking for um and I can tell you from experience that there's a lot of scholarships out there National scholarships that for students that people don't know about and they don't apply to uh so you have really good chances at winning a lot of money um so that might be a program your chapter puts on is how to write a good essay and how to ask for a good letter of reference like there could be things going on that really help you fun activities service activities all sorts of things um it's not just for your first year just remember that um it's a lifetime but also particularly for your four years of college or three and a half that you have left um there's opportunities to do things next year the year after we have senior incentives if you do maintain a three five you get another certificate there's this in your book award and then of course honor Courts at graduation are always very very popular um we um we Mo a lot of students would like to wear the Honor Court at graduation um if you want to get a bit of a taste of really what ald is all about it suggest you follow us we're mostly on Instagram we really don't do a whole lot on Facebook anymore a little bit on LinkedIn we do have a YouTube channel where we post a lot of our leadership videos but we're most active on um Instagram and we're actually I think like one or two away from 5 000 followers so we're pretty excited about that so after this session I might see that we've uh exceeded 5000 which we hope um so check us out on Instagram uh the last thing is just for Logistics if you're wondering about timing everybody every chapter is different so some of you have deadlines coming up I know for Purdue uh today is the day what we call the close date to join in order to get a certificate in time for your ceremony it's not the drop dead deadline you can still join after today but you may not have the certificate in time for the ceremony anyway everybody's different every chapter is different if you're wondering when your deadlines are I have the deadlines pulled up on my other screen here if you want to ask um but uh just check out your invitations that you received through email okay um Carly anything more uh and then if anybody has questions you can unmute yourself or put it in the chat I'll hang out for a bit but Carly anything more you wanna and about I've talked a lot probably way too much uh let's hear the student voice again yeah again I was just highly encourage you um to do your own research as I said look at all the benefits on our national website check out our Instagram I know I really enjoy looking at um social media so looking at what all ald is doing in other chapters as well because they do repost what other people are doing and yeah