Advisory team completes mentoring program pilot
The mentoring program pilot included testing an online system for connecting Oregon Alpha alumni and undergraduates.
Over the last two years, Oregon Alpha alumni have been exploring how fraternity life has changed or needs to change to keep houses relevant to today’s students. It’s clear that students coming to the University of Oregon in 2022 are better prepared and more accomplished than at any time in history. They arrive on campus focused on their future and looking for opportunities to prepare themselves for post-graduation life.
That got us thinking about how valuable our network of alumni is. How many of us did informational interviews with brothers when we graduated, or were even given our first job by one? How often have we turned to a brother for advice on career moves or ideas for being successful in business? How many brothers have we done business with directly?
So we asked ourselves, what if we could create a mentoring program that appeals to the smart, motivated students on campus today by creating connections to alumni who can help while they are in school, when they graduate, and as they navigate their professional life? It could be a huge point of differentiation on campus and a huge benefit to our future undergraduate brothers.
That promise is all brothers Mark Billings (‘89, 1246) and Steve Sherk (‘87, 1202) needed to figure out how to set up an undergraduate mentoring program and test it with our new chapter members. Both brothers have experience building teams and mentoring young professionals, so the challenge was in taking models that work in a business setting and apply them to a low-budget, all-volunteer fraternity program.
Steve and Mark created a pilot program for the 2021-22 school year that included three foundational elements to get started. The goal was to keep it simple, learn what interests the undergraduates, and evolve the program with the students as they go through their college career. Here are the three elements we started with this year:
Phi Psi Connect
The first element put in place is a system for connecting alumni and undergraduates to simplify the management of the mentoring program. Fortunately, the National fraternity licenses a software platform called graduway and has set up a dedicated area for Oregon Alpha members to connect. They call it Phi Psi Connect and make it available to chapters at no cost. Our current alumni mentors and undergraduates registered for the system this year to test it so you may hear more about this in the future as our chapter grows and we need more alumni volunteers.
Alumni Mentors
With the Phi Psi Connect system in place, Steve and Mark set up 1-1 mentoring partners between our Chapter Advisory Team members and the undergraduates. Each alumnus contacted their assigned student to set up regular times to talk and learn what the student would like to get out of the experience. Some students wanted to learn more about how to be involved in the fraternity and others were interested in career-related topics.
“In the past, creating these 1-1 relationships over long distances would have been difficult,” said brother Sherk. “But we are all so comfortable with video conferencing now that it really opens up an opportunity for undergraduates to personally connect with alumni no matter where they live.”
Second Tuesday sessions
The mentoring program also included “Second Tuesday” sessions where an alumnus met virtually with the whole chapter on the second Tuesday of the month. The format of the calls evolved with each Tuesday, but the main goal this year was to introduce a few alumni to talk about their background, Phi Psi experience, college degree, and work experience. This summer, Mark and Steve are planning to work with the undergrads to identify topics (industries, professions, etc…) that would interest them next year and begin lining up alumni guests.
“This year, we learned a mentoring program can be a big part of what Phi Kappa Psi offers undergraduates,” said brother Billings. “This was not only a pilot year for us, but also for the national fraternity and university who are both watching to see how this works. We could become a model for what the fraternity experience should be about in the future.”
If you are interested in being involved in the mentoring program — to share ideas for the program or to volunteer, just email Mark or Steve to learn more.
