Sigma Phi Epsilon - Colorado School of Mines

Spring 2018 S I G M A P H I E P S I L O N AT C O L O R A D O S C H O O L O F M I N E S THE STOPE A New Alumni Engagement Program Colorado Delta to Plan More Alumni Events A s you can tell from the new Stope, the AVC has made some changes in how we hope to engage with our SigEp alumni. Over the past few years, thanks to many of you who supported the Chapter, we have been able to revitalize the house through improvement and renovation projects. With our loan now paid off, we began examining the next major strategic need and decided to begin a new alumni engagement program. There are several aspects involved, with the first already in place: we have hired an outside consultant to help with better alumni communications. You have already received their request to update your bio file, and now you've received the first Stope. While the undergraduates and AVC will still write articles, Pennington & Company will help keep us on task and make sure the Stope becomes a regular, twice-a-year publication again. Each issue will have updates on Chapter performance, upcoming events, and spotlights on alumni. This is only the first step in better engagement and communications. Future efforts include email alerts, social media posts, and specific mailed postcard invitations for major special events. In fact, we're already planning for our first major event this fall when the Chapter House turns 50 years old! Thankfully, the walls can't talk, but we hope to see you there to share stories, connect with brothers, and meet the undergraduates. Beyond the Stope and other published communications, we've also restructured our board to better engage with the alumni. A new engagement committee has been outlined with Bill Reupert '72, former AVC vice president, heading it. A select group of era captains has been contacted about helping the AVC promote alumni events with their job being to help get more alumni out here reconnecting. This certainly includes the bigger events like Homecoming or E-Days, but they will also assist with smaller, less formal get-togethers throughout the year. One idea we're pursuing is era dinners, where a decade or so of alumni would be invited to the Chapter for dinner each month. If you have other ideas for how we can best engage and reconnect with you and our brothers, please get in touch with either Bill or me. Fraternally, Eric Wilson '94 AVC President eric.wilson@thecpigroup.net A LIFETIME OF LEARNING WITH SIGEP Cameron Afkhami '10 Shares How Colorado Delta Helped Him as an Engineer W hen considering a fraternity or sorority, one hopes the brothers or sisters will be friendly and welcoming. This was certainly the case when Cameron Afkhami '10 met the Colorado Delta brothers during recruitment, but from the beginning he also felt a deeper connection to Sigma Phi Epsilon. "I felt it was a good group of people who were focused on the right things," he recalls. "They wanted to have good grades and live a balanced lifestyle." SFE ultimately put Cameron on a good path into a lifelong journey of learning. "My undergrad experience with SigEp gave me another vein of responsibilities to manage, helping me learn to balance many tasks," Cameron said. These time management skills proved crucial to his time as an engineering student. "In college, you have academics along with learning how to live on your own. Colorado Delta helped me with that but also challenged me to grow." Cameron served as VP of recruitment, guard, and VP of programs in the house, which he credits with strengthening his communication and leadership skills. These roles came at a time when the house was at its lowest point in membership, but together the brothers began to make a comeback. "It was a great experience having that pressure on my brothers and I to recruit new members. Looking back, it was my one of the first times my performance had real-world consequences." Cameron worked hard at Colorado Delta but had fun with brothers in the process. Some of his favorite memories include working on Homecoming floats as (Continued on page 2)

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