Margaret Leibovic - US Anita Borg Scholar* 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Margaret is a junior at MIT, pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering, with an interest in web development and user interface design. She is originally from Irvington, New York, a suburb of New York City, but has barely left Boston since coming to college. She is a sprinter on MIT's varsity track team and President of the Theta Omicron chapter of Alpha Chi Omega.

My mom inspires me because she is ridiculously laid-back about everything. Most things in life are not worth getting upset about, and I try to keep that in mind as I go about my daily life.

*Anita Borg Scholars - The Google Anita Borg Scholarship was established in 2004 to honor the legacy of Dr. Anita Borg (www.anitaborg.org) and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology.  Since first awarding the scholarship to 8 women in 2004, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship program has expanded to include Anita Borg Scholarship programs for women studying computer science in Australia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East & North Africa, and New Zealand.

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University of New Mexico Names Clauve Outstanding Senior Awards Winners

The Dean of Students has announced the winners of the Clauve Outstanding Senior Awards. The students will be honored at a recognition reception on Thursday, April 16. The winners are Desbah Ahtsoaq Bill Benally, Michaela Brown, Chris Chaves, Joseph M. Dworak, Ashley C. Fate, Molly Maguire-Marshall and Alex D. Riebli.

   …

Fate is a marketing major who served as senator and president of ASUNM, vice president of Alpha Chi Omega and a member of the Mortar Board Honor Society. She has worked on student government boards including the Student Union Building Board, ASUNM Lobo Spirit Committee and ASUNM Lobby Committee and is the chair of the Student Fee Review Board. She has also been listed in “Who’s Who Among College and Universities” since 2007.

AXO collegian in the NY Times!   (Jeanette Jones, the women on the left of the picture that goes with this article is a current member of Alpha and a senior at DPU.  She is a Greencastle native, and is one of the most outstanding women in the senior class.  She hopes to study abroad on a Fellowship in New Zealand after graduation.  She serves as one of President Casey's "ambassadors," one of only 6 students on campus to be chosen to do so.) 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/garden/08casey.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1 

WHEN Brian W. Casey was interviewing for the job of president of DePauw University here, what he found most daunting was not the prospect of raising the profile of this liberal arts college, or winning over the faculty and students.

What worried him was The House.

The president’s house is a formal Colonial Revival-style building at the edge of this small liberal arts campus here in rural Greencastle, 45 minutes southwest of Indianapolis. Since 1925, every DePauw president had lived in the house — with his wife.

Dr. Casey was the only finalist who did not ask to see the house, and when he saw it, his face fell. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure it works for you, Brian,” one of the trustees, Sarah Wallace, the head of the search committee, whispered to him.

Dr. Casey, a historian and former associate academic dean at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is 46 and single, which makes him an anomaly among college presidents. A 2006 study by the American Council on Networking found that 73 percent of college presidents were male, and 89 percent of them were married.

When he interviewed for the job here, he was living, happily, he said, in an 850-square-foot rental in Cambridge.

It wasn’t just the prospect of living alone in the three-story house that daunted him, Dr. Casey said. It was the social duties that came with it. Even the official name of the house — The Elms — seemed formidable.

Now, as he begins his second year leading the university, Dr. Casey has not only adjusted to living at The Elms, he has also reinvented the house and its role on campus. He regularly invites professors, students, staff members and visitors to the house, which has shed its heavy drapes and visually become more open and welcoming.

He wanted to use the house as “an engine for change,” he said. “It’s become a place of talk and conversation and debate — what a house on campus ought to be.”

He has made The Elms the place to be on campus, and there is nothing exclusive about it.

“The house has become a metaphor for what Brian is doing with the whole campus,” said Lisa Hollander, DePauw’s vice president for alumni relations. “Warming it up, opening it up.”

Greg Schwipps, an English professor, novelist and 1995 DePauw graduate, recalled his excitement last fall as he prepared to attend the first of a series of small working faculty dinners at Dr. Casey’s house. In his 12 years as a faculty member, he had never stepped foot inside the president’s house. He had received invitations to annual receptions, he said, but as a junior professor, he had always felt too intimidated to show up.

“I said to one of my students, ‘I’m invited to the president’s house for dinner,’ ” Professor Schwipps said. “He said, ‘Cool, I’ve already been twice.’ ”

By the time they had made Dr. Casey the leading finalist, the trustees were captivated by his passion and plan for transforming DePauw into one of the nation’s very best small liberal arts colleges.

He had a law degree from Stanford, two graduate degrees in history from Harvard and an undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics from Notre Dame, where he was captain of the swim team. Ebullient and youthful, he was already connecting with students.

The one question, for Dr. Casey and, fleetingly, for a few trustees, was about a single guy serving as the host at The Elms. “Entertaining, for me, when I lived in Boston and New York, was telling everyone what restaurant we’re all going to meet at,” he said. “I can’t cook a thing. I’d never thrown a huge dinner party, I’d never done any of this. And all of a sudden I realized it was part of the job I hadn’t thought of at all.”

His talent, he said, was for being a guest at parties. “I was always the person who took care of the music. I’d burn CD’s, or bring my iPod.”

The previous president, Robert Bottoms, who is widely admired for diversifying the college and building the endowment and had retired after 22 years, had relied on his wife, Gwen, as the hostess of The Elms. He could not have done the job without her, Dr. Bottoms said. “She was kind of like the first lady of DePauw,” he said.

“I don’t have Mrs. Brian Casey,” Dr. Casey said. “I don’t have the partner who is going to do this with me.”

But he told the search committee he’d come up with a solution to the matter of the president’s house. He would simply invite everyone for regular dinners and parties. As for his lack of a spouse, he would enlist the help of a group of students as his co-hosts.

“I loved that idea,” Ms. Hollander said. “We have the most social student body. That sounded so right.”

Last Thursday night, Dr. Casey held the annual trustees dinner, with his 13 student ambassadors at his side.

“This place is more alive than it’s ever been,” said Kathy Hubbard, a trustee, looking around at the multigenerational crush of 96 guests ranging in age from 20 to over 60,

Trustees and their spouses mingled with professors and staff members. After checking to make sure his iPod was ready with the playlist he had created for the evening (including John Coltrane — “In a Sentimental Mood,” Astrud Gilberto — “Corcovado,” Diana Krall — “’Deed I Do” ), a smiling Dr. Casey was making the rounds.

Matt Jennings, 23, a new trustee and 2009 DePauw graduate who is now with Teach for America, recalled returning last fall from studying in Paris. Dr. Casey walked him around campus and described the DePauw he wanted to create. “On that day,” Mr. Jennings said, “I realized I loved Greencastle more than Paris.”

It was close to 11 when the last guests left, still exclaiming over the after-dinner performance by Adam Gilbert, a student ambassador, of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” and Broadway show tunes (piano accompaniment provided by a trustee, James B. Stewart, the journalist and author). With the party over, Dr. Casey offered a tour of the house, starting at the front door.

“I walked in, and I thought, ‘I can’t live here,’ ” he said, recalling his first visit. He waved his hand at the long sweep of hallway. “It’s 114 feet to the other end.”

One of his first acts as president was to remove the curtains covering the glass panes of the front doors. “I wanted people to see in,” he said. Such gestures carried a lot of weight with the faculty. (“It’s a transparent house,” said Pedar Foss, a classics professor who is dean of academic life.)

Dr. Casey led the way into the small white dining room, with the built-in bookshelves, that had been a little-used study. Here, he said, is where he holds faculty dinners for 8 to 10 people. “I love dining rooms with lots of books,” he said. “I thought this would be a great place to have conversations about DePauw and the curriculum.”

The dining room was inspired by the great parties he’d been to at a friend’s small apartment on the Upper West Side, where the table was squeezed in among the bookshelves.

He pointed out the color-coded books. Red and orange — “The Economic Value of Higher Networking” and “Blacks at Harvard;” tan and beige include “Our Underachieving Colleges,” and “All the King’s Men.” It is one of the stories people tell about Dr. Casey’s house.

Last Christmas, he had offered to put the house on Greencastle’s historic house tour for the first time. While he was traveling for work, decorators arrived to prepare the house.

“I came home to find this winter wonderland — garland everywhere,” he said. “I walked into the dining room and they had taken all my books and put them back on the shelves arranged by color.”

“It’s really strange,” he said, scanning the shelves, “when you realize how many books you have that are orange.”

“Now when I have to find a book, I have to think, ‘What color is it?’ ”

The trustees had raised the money to make the necessary changes to the house, which mostly involved opening it up, pruning overgrown shrubs and trees, repairing water damage, creating a large catering kitchen — in the past the food was prepared off-site — and painting the Tiffany blue dining room in creamy white and silvery gray. Small lights were also installed in the ceiling.

In his rare down time, Dr. Casey unwinds in the private part of the house — a small living room behind the kitchen, with a pair of contemporary sofas, a wooden desk and ladder bookshelves from his previous life. Back stairs lead to his bedroom suite, on the second floor, where there are also four other bedroom suites where he invites trustees, and other visitors, to stay.

“There was one night I was in the private living room,” he said, and decided to sit by the fireplace in the grander, public one. “I had this book, I walked over — it’s a long walk,” he said. “I’m sitting in this room, I was trying to read. I felt like I was in some bizarre Hollywood piece. I left.”

He led the way into the remodeled white kitchen and out to the stone patio, with its new fireplace and white trellised pavilion.

He stood at the edge of the pool and told a story that has already become part of campus lore about the president’s house.

Karl Rove and Howard Dean were on campus last month for a debate. Dr. Casey held a party in their honor before the event. It was a warm afternoon, and people were mingling on the patio.

“So Karl Rove says to me, ‘President Casey, I really want to talk to you, come over here,’ ” he said. “The light was on the pool. I looked down, and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s this huge clump of dead leaves in the pool.’ ”

On second glance, oh, no. “It was a dead mouse,” he said. “Karl Rove reaches over, grabs a napkin, reaches in, grabs this big dead mouse — and throws it in the shrubs. He walks back over.”

He thanked Mr. Rove, and told him, ”You are never to mention this to anyone.”

Later that night, in his opening remarks before a packed auditorium, Mr. Rove announced to half the campus that there was a dead mouse in Dr. Casey’s pool.  

Classy girls go Alpha Chi.

Great PACEing from Becky Byler, Epsilon Phi (GA Tech)

http://voice.paly.net/view_story.php?id=9283 

Paly Alumni find fraternities, sororities defy stereotypes

Greek life proves to be more than party life for former Paly students

posted December 14, 2009

Animal House. Revenge of the Nerds. Old School. Many modern films have attempted to portray Greek life at American universities, often perpetuating stereotypes involving wild behavior and reckless partying. However, several Paly graduates have decided to look past the stereotype and explore the world of fraternities and sororities for themselves.

Becky Byler, 2009 Paly graduate, was first attracted to the idea of a sorority due to the new culture she was entering as she made the move from Palo Alto to Georgia Tech University, located in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Sororities are very big in the south and if you are any sort of normal girl you rush and pledge a sorority," Byler said.

...

Cheyenne Overby (Beta Eta chapter and legacy, Convention attendee, all-around model sister)

https://campus.fsu.edu/profiles/1/ 

Gamma Iota (University of Florida) Outstanding Sisters

http://www.sustainability.ufl.edu/about/staff/BaileyKilbourne.html  

Bailey Kilbourne - Intern Fall 2009, Summer 2009, Spring 2009, Fall 2008, Summer 2008

Bailey Kilbourne is a junior environmental science major with minors in french and sustainability studies. She is working on the "Sustainability Hut" project

Bailey is also an undersecretary for SG environmental affairs cabinet, a part of Greeks Going Green, Alpha Chi Omega's sustainability chair, and was a Pi Chi 2008. She is leading the new Student Government agency, Gators Going Green.

She plans on graduating from UF and probably going into the Peace Corps for two years, then returning to the U.S. for graduate studies at Berkeley, and eventually work with green design or engineering.

http://cals.ufl.edu/ambassadors/ambassadors-current.shtml  

Katie Faber

Katie is a senior from Orlando, Florida, majoring in Food Science and Human Nutrition, with a specialization in Dietetics. She is actively involved in her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, where she currently serves as the chapter’s VP Pan-Hellenic Delegate. She is also an active member of Order of Omega Honor Society. In the fall, she plans to work as a patient care assistant at Shands, which she hopes will prepare her for Physician’s Assistant school. After obtaining her Bachelor’s Degree, she will complete an internship to receive a Registered Dietician license, then go on to pursue her career as a PA.

Nancy Padron - GAmma Iota

see Nancy's fine arts work

http://www.acastronovo.com/StudentIndex.htm

she is also a Convocation Scholar and president of the Women's Leadership Council - such an excellent example of a collegiate AXO

http://www.thefloridaengineer.eng.ufl.edu/issues/0801/educating.php 

Educating the Engineer

by nicole cisneros mckeen

Educating the next generation of engineers has never been more important — or more difficult.

Nancy Padron was destined to be an engineer.

It started well enough. Padron's mailbox was stuffed with acceptance letters from UF, Baylor and Georgia Tech. She made the wait list at MIT. Her father is a doctor, her mother is a lawyer and her stepfather is a mechanical and aerospace engineer. She got a B in calculus — a notoriously difficult class among even the brightest first-year engineering students. Science and math are tattooed on her DNA.

"I got A's and B's," said Padron, now a sophomore at UF. "It [engineering] was never a hard thing for me. It was something I was good at. I had the technical skills for it. I was intelligent enough to comprehend the material." 

But in November of her freshman year, Padron decided she would transfer to the College of Fine Arts and major in sculpture. She said she changed her major because she "just wanted to wake up happy with what she was doing." 

There have been countless articles written and millions of dollars spent on research all pointing to unprepared students, retention issues, outsourcing and foreign education. And there's one common denominator: an education system that no longer propels students into science- and math-related fields.

"There is a huge problem," said Pramod Khargonekar, dean of the UF College of Engineering. "A large number of talented students who might have taken a liking in math or science are turned off pursuing those subjects."

Khargonekar said he believes social pressures and influences, especially on girls, makes it difficult for children to show an interest in math and sciences.

"The word geek — which I take great offense to — is a symptom of underlying social forces at work," the dean said. "Since when has it become a crime to be smart? Why is it socially unacceptable to be good at math? Why is it we don't hold up these students as great talents, rather than [allowing them to be] sneered at as geeks? In some sense I think we as a society have simply given up on science and math. A nation that can put a man on the moon...does not have the same determination it used to."

Like an old family photograph, the determination of 50 years ago has faded.

"There was a tremendous explosion in communications technology," Khargonekar said. "The Internet made it possible to collaborate with people all over the world in a far more effective manner. The other thing that changed is a rise in engineering capacity in other nations, like the availability of computer-aided design tools which enabled engineers anywhere to do a higher level of work than was possible before. A person in India is using the same tools as a person in California; that was a great equalizer."

The National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Engineering have the same prediction: If something isn't done soon to better prepare and interest the nation's children in science and engineering careers, there will be serious consequences.

Perhaps the most alarming statistics come from a report called Rising Above the Gathering Storm by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine.

The report calls for initiatives to:

• Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education.
• Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research.
• Develop, recruit and retain top students, scientists and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad.
• Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation.
• The 2007 report ends with a list of "worrisome indicators" that include the numbers of engineers being produced by China, India, Japan and other countries. The report states that in 2004, China graduated about 500,000 engineers and India graduated 200,000. America graduated 70,000.

Vivek Wadhwa, a faculty member at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and co-author of Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India, says those numbers are fuzzy and nothing more than scare tactics.

"It seems to happen every 10 to 20 years and it turns out there is no [engineering] shortage," Wadhwa said. "People are playing with the numbers for their own reasons."

Wadhwa reasoned it's cheaper for technological executives to hire foreign employees. Thus, lobbyists hired by technological firms push for more H-1Bs (temporary worker passes allowing foreigners with the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor's degree into the country), and that means cheaper labor. Wadhwa also said some foreign engineering degrees are not equivalent to a degree from an accredited U.S. engineering school.

Still, even if international engineering education isn't America's enemy, it's possible the nation is its own enemy.

Science-based organizations have concerns about the future of science and engineering education. The 2006 National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators report stated many college freshmen lacked adequate preparation for higher education and needed remedial courses to transition into college. The report also stated the foundation's concerns about many U.S. math and science teachers not being qualified to teach those subjects. The report goes on to say college graduates who became teachers have somewhat lower academic skills on average than those who do not go into teaching.

"There is a mix of teachers in our schools who are not prepared to teach science and math," Khargonekar said.

But he's not complaining. He's not blaming teachers or the state education system. He sees a problem that Gator Engineering can help mend.

The College has a plethora of programs geared toward retaining students and training teachers to use hands-on projects in their classrooms.

"We have set off the fire alarms in Weil Hall more than once demonstrating the principles of physics [experimenting with heat and pressure] to high schools teachers and students," said Deb Mayhew, assistant director of student affairs, who also manages the College's outreach programs. "We try to connect with middle and high school kids early on and let them know that math and science are important. So many things start to distract them during their adolescence. When they see things like the SAE [Society of Automotive Engineers] cars and the wind tunnels, it helps them to see what engineering is in a practical way."

Besides the hands-on-learning clinics the College offers to high school teachers and students, Gator Engineering is preparing an attack on student retention. Nationally, only about 50 percent of students who enter college expecting to major in engineering actually graduate with an engineering degree — most of the drop-off happens in the freshman year. Therefore, seeing engineering for what it is instead of through the glazed eyes of a freshman may be the key to keeping kids on track.

"This is a national problem and has to do with how we teach freshmen as much as with how we teach high school students," said Cammy Abernathy, associate dean for academic affairs.

Gator Engineering has tried to address this by clustering students in engineering-only sections — including some engineering-women-only sections — of a few fundamental courses, Abernathy said. This helps the students develop community and helps to keep them from feeling isolated.

Materials Science & Engineering doctoral student Samesha Barnes was a chemistry teaching assistant for three semesters before the University cut the program's funding. The program provided a select group of engineering graduate students with extremely competitive leadership awards to teach core courses like chemistry, calculus and physics to first-year engineering students.

"They wanted to see if matching the young engineers with Ph.D. students would help the retention rate of engineering freshmen," said Barnes, whose students often tell her they hated chemistry and didn't get it until taking her class. "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life."

The tragedy lies in the experiences of all the would-be engineering students who never got the opportunity to participate in a program like the one Abernathy and Barnes describe.

Students like Nancy Padron.

The engineering-student-turned-fine-arts-major said she is confident in her decision to leave engineering, but she still considers herself an engineer at heart.

"If I had been on the fence about switching majors," Padron said, "and engineering classes were more creative and hands-on, I would have thought twice about it."

Local student wins Metropolitan Opera Guild ‘Encouragement Award’

Stetson University senior vocal performance major Christine Ella Reinard [Gamma Chi]was awarded the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s “Encouragement Award” at this year’s Florida District auditions, held Jan. 23.

Reinard, 21, was one of the youngest contestants in this year’s competition, and after performing two arias before the panel of judges, her ability and professionalism were honored with the “Encouragement Award.” The award is an honor given to a young participant in the competition that the judges’ panel feels is worthy of encouragement to compete again in the future.

“I enjoyed the experience of being able to sing with others who are further along in their vocal journey and to hear the judge’s comments to help me improve as an artist,” Reinard said. “It was exciting and motivational to win something, especially since the other winners, those who got to move on, were a good four years older than me at least!”

The daughter of Cathy and Gary Reinard of Copake, N.Y., Reinard is a mezzo-soprano had originally intended to pursue an undergraduate degree in the Northeast. But, after a job change transferred her family to Florida (she graduated from Martin County High School in Stuart, Fla., in 2006), she redirected her college search and chose Stetson.

Reinard has been a member of Dr. Craig Maddox’s studio in the Stetson School of Music during her four undergraduate years, as well as taking part in many opera roles, remaining active in the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and maintaining an impressive 3.9 GPA. She was the 2009 Harold Giffin Scholarship Competition winner and one of 32 chosen out of the nearly 1,000 who auditioned for the 2009 Seagle Music Colony season.

“I love Stetson!” Reinard said. “I love being a Hatter, and I am so proud to have gone here, to have had all these opportunities, to be able to proudly say I’m another Stetson student out on the forefront and following in the footsteps of other great students.”

After graduation, she intends to attend graduate school and pursue a career as a professional vocalist.

Reinard’s success continues a string of awards won by Maddox’s students in recent years. Also in January, junior vocal performance major Jason Ryan won first place in the National Opera Association’s prestigious Young Artist Competition in Atlanta, Ga. Ryan, a baritone, won in the Scholarship Division, which is for college students ages 18-24, and also won The Legacy Award as the outstanding minority student in the competition. In 2006, bass-baritone Donovan Singletary was a Metropolitan Opera Finals winner, and in 2007, counter-tenor Tai Oney was a Metropolitan Opera District winner and Regional runner-up.

KSU Students Nominated For Udall Scholarships

MANHATTAN, Kansas - Three Kansas State University students have been nominated for Morris K. Udall Scholarships: Emily Tummons, Leawood; Emily Patton, Prairie Village; and Mark Sowers, Spring Hill.

The Udall scholarship is worth as much as $5,000 and is awarded to as many as 80 students each year. Scholarship recipients must be seeking either a career related to the environment or be a Native American or a Native Alaskan seeking a career in health care or tribal policy. Udall scholars will be announced April 6.

Tummons is a junior in biological systems engineering. She has been researching the population decline of the Yosemite toad, specifically focusing on the effect that climate change has had on the population because of decreases in the annual snowfall in the Sierra Nevada in the last decade. She is continuing a Research Experiences for Undergraduates summer project that she did at the University of California-Merced with Eric Berlow, director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute Yosemite Field Station. Tummons is a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, National Society of Collegiate Scholars and Golden Key international honor society. She is a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority [Gamma Zeta] and a participant in the sorority's intramurals. She has received the Medallion Scholarship, Beckman Memorial Scholarship, the Regan Scholarship and College of Engineering scholarships through the Kansas State University Foundation. A 2007 graduate of St. Teresa's Academy, she is the daughter of Philip and Louann Tummons of Leawood.

...

K-State students have earned 21 Udall scholarships, which makes K-State third among state universities in the Udall scholarship competition.

Amanda Litman - Gamma chapter, Northwestern

Amanda Litman is a sophomore American Studies major at Northwestern University. She currently serves as Editor-in-chief of North by Northwestern, an independent online newsmagazine with a quarterly print magazine.

This morning [9 April, 2010], HuffPost College met with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Director of Domestic Policy Melody Barnes for an "Open For Questions" live chat. Last week, we solicited questions from our college network and let HuffPost readers choose the best one. 150,000 votes later, we flew the winning paper's editor, Amanda Litman of North by Northwestern, to Washington, D.C. to ask her question in person -- and we also posed the others to Duncan and Barnes. A transcript of the interview follows the video.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/watch-huffpost-college-an_n_532143.html 

Outstanding Clemson Woman!

Congratulations Theta Lambda sister Erika Diven (my chapter too - yay)

http://www.clemson.edu/media-relations/article.php?article_id=2690

CLEMSON — The President’s Commission on the Status of Women at Clemson University has announced its 2010 Outstanding Women and Distinguished Contributor Award honorees.

The commission was established in 1994 by former Clemson President Max Lennon with a singular focus of improving the quality of life for women at Clemson. The first Outstanding Women Awards were presented in 1995 to recognize those who make significant contributions toward this mission.

...

Erika Diven, a senior political science major and member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority, received the Thea McCrary Student Award for Outstanding Service. This award honors a female or male student who is engaged in public service or public education on matters critical to the lives of women and society in general. This award was established in 2005 to honor the late Thea McCrary, former captain of the Clemson University Police Department, charter member and former chairwoman of the Women’s Commission and recipient of one of the first Outstanding Women Awards. Diven was instrumental in the success of last year’s Sex and the 21st Century forums on sexual violence, which drew standing-room-only crowds to the Self Auditorium at the Strom Thurmond Institute. She has participated in philanthropic events such as Up ‘till Dawn and Relay for Life; however, her most exemplary efforts have been in the fight against domestic violence. Last year she organized “Kiss Domestic Violence Goodbye,” a lip-gloss sale for Valentine’s Day that supported Safe Harbor and The Missy Wiley Fund. She also organized “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” and recruited more than 100 students — male and female — to walk a mile in high heels to raise awareness and funds for the fight against domestic violence. Through her many fundraising efforts, including a gala dinner and silent auction for 120 guests, Diven has raised more than $7,000 for Safe Harbor, providing safe emergency shelter, counseling, legal advocacy and community outreach and education in Greenville, Pickens, Anderson and Oconee counties. She is also a trained childcare advocate for the shelter, and often visits with the women on holidays.

Well Done Gamma Chi Chapter!

Keep Reaching for the Heights

http://www.stetson.edu/administration/greeklife/media/images/awardspics/most_improved_sorority_of_the_year.jpg