Brothers

My name is Timothy Weale, and I am honored to be your new Province Alumni Coordinator. Before he decided to devote his time to leading the Central Ohio Alumni Association, my predecessor, Brother Beickelman, left me several clear goals, which I intend to follow up on.

First off, we have our first Province Three Alumni Association! This June, the brothers of the Central Ohio Alumni Interest Group signed the official petition for recognition. Later that month, the COS reviewed and accepted their application.

But, this is only the first step. My goal is to expand the number of province alumni associations to include an Eastern Ohio Association, a Miami Valley / Dayton Area Association, a Cincinnati Association and even a Cleveland Association. On these fronts, I have begun communication with the PACs from 2 and 21 in order to develop a common recruitment strategy and maximize our utilization of Cleveland area brothers.

Additionally, I have emailed the new PAC for Province 25 and am trying to get his assistance in starting the Cincinnati Association. Finally, former National Retreat Coordinator Sean Leno has made his way back to Dayton, and we have already had a few brief organizational discussions.

Secondly, based on a request from Dan Krueger, the Director of Alumni Affairs, I have started to contact schools with inactive chapters in an effort to update our fraternity records. As a start, Dan and I collaborated on a letter to college alumni offices that introduces the fraternity, states our needs and lets them know how we intend to use the updated addresses. This letter has been sent to four of our six inactive chapters. I have heard back from three of these – Denison and Ohio Wesleyan will be working with us and sending us what information they have, while Wright State only seems willing to work with an alumnus of their university.

Finally, I want to emphasize the role of alumni in this province. Primary to this task is communication. We must know where brothers are living – chapter databases must be kept up-to-date and every brother should learn how to update their information on myDesktop. Next, we need to be organized earlier so that any event that might attract alumni interest can be adequately advertised. Finally, we need to establish a strong communication base by publishing alumni newsletters and not only developing, but also utilizing chapter alumni listserves.

Obviously, I cannot this alone, and chapter officers must share in a lot of this work. My job is to coordinate and support the officers to accomplish many these goals. I’m here for you. If you have ideas, let me know. I can assist you in getting addresses from your alumni office. I can help you budget and plan alumni events. I have done newsletters. I will try to have a breakout session at every province event this year so that we can discuss successes, failures and challenges of alumni interaction. I intend to visit every chapter some time this year. My goal is to communicate with each of you and help each of you communicate with each other for the development of a strong alumni program.

Sinfonia is a lifelong journey. Only a few years ago, many brothers viewed initiation as the end of their learning as Sinfonians – once you were initiated, there was nothing else to learn. Now, we have continuing fraternal education in the form of leadership training, ritual retreats and the like. It must be stressed to all members that collegiate membership is only the beginning of their association with Phi Mu Alpha. This is the next frontier for our fraternity, with huge potential to change this organization for the better. Discounting some philosophical discrepancies we hold with some alumni, this task holds huge organizational and logistical problems – in Province Three alone, we have over 1000 “lost” alumni, with countless more unmailable. Our goal will be reached in small, simple steps over the course of decades.

Respectfully Submitted in Phi, Mu and Alpha,

Timothy Weale
Province Three Alumni Coordinator