Alpha Chi Omega is celebrating
125 years of sisterhood!
Past National President Marsha Grady on Alpha Chi Omega's 125th Anniversary
Alpha Chi Omega: The Early Years
You can purchase a DVD of this video!
Historical Audio Files
Nellie Gamble Childe
Her Founding Story
Olive Burnett Clark
Her Founding Story
Bertha Deniston Cunningham
Her Founding Story, Part 1
Her Founding Story, Part 2
Estelle Leonard
Her Founding Story, Parts 1 & 2
Her Founding Story, Parts 3 & 4
On the piano, "Racing Here to There," a piece for a young boy
On the piano, a piece for a pupil
On the piano, a piece for a funeral
Marion MacDowell, Founder of The MacDowell Colony
Interview
Our History
With Alpha Chi Omega, you get an organization built by and for real, strong women.
Alpha Chi Omega was founded on October 15, 1885 at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. That’s about 70 miles southwest of our current headquarters in Indianapolis.
Back when America was getting used to the notion that women belonged in college at all, the dean of DePauw’s School of Music, Professor James Hamilton Howe, invited seven of his female students to form a women’s society within the school.
Our founders took Professor Howe’s suggestion a step further and formed a women’s fraternity, only the sixth of its kind in the country. They were the first such group in the music school and believed they’d be the last. So they chose as their name the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet—Alpha and Omega. They put the word “Kai” (and) in the middle, and later changed it to the Greek letter Chi.
Our founders wanted Alpha Chi Omega to advance “the intellectual, social and moral culture” of its members. It worked. Today, our women’s Fraternity, the Alpha Chi Omega Foundation and our National Housing Corporation serve more than 200,000 members in more than 130 collegiate chapters and 200 alumnae chapters nationwide.
For more information about Alpha Chi Omega’s history and traditions, contact Vicky Harrison, Archivist/Ritual Coordinator.