ACN Wins Big at PTK Regional Convention!

by ANGELINA SMITH AND JASON GLYNN.

Alpha Chi Nu, SMCC’s Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, is excited to welcome everyone back from Spring Break, and we hope you had an awesome time off and received plenty of much-needed sleep! While many students were getting in their last hurrahs over the weekend, so was Alpha Chi Nu at the 2014 Phi Theta Kappa New England Regional Convention!

Your Chapter Officers and Advisor, Shane Long, squeezed into a vehicle and traveled to Nashua, New Hampshire for our regional convention. Hosted by Nashua Community College, the convention included inspirational speakers such as Luke Davis, Susan Edwards, and Scott Olesen. Informational lectures called “breakout sessions” educated PTK members and alumni about leadership in their chapters and communities, PTK endeavors such as Honors in Action, Five-Star Chapter Plans, College Projects, scholarships, and transfer opportunities.

The Regional Convention finished with a delicious banquet, Awards Gala, and the results of the Regional Officer Elections. The Awards Gala honored Phi Theta Kappa members, officers, and chapters for outstanding achievements and contributions to their colleges and communities, as well as to PTK as a whole. Your very own SMCC Chapter, Alpha Chi Nu, brought home first place in both the Most Distinguished Officer Team and College Project categories! Our College Project for this year was the Captain’s Cupboard food pantry, something you may have heard about.

We also achieved Five Star Status for our chapter, and five Honorable Mentions: Leanna Shields, Chapter President, and Jason Glynn, V.P. of Leadership, both earned a Most Distinguished Officer Award, and Alpha Chi Nu as a whole received a Most Distinguished Chapter Award and two more honorable mentions for our Honors in Action Project and Honors in Action Project Theme!

Our warmest congratulations to our new Regional Officer Team and all the fantastic people who participated in and made regionals a huge success! We are looking forward to hopefully winning more at NerdNation, the 2014 Phi Theta Kappa International Convention, in Orlando, Florida, later this April!

We would also like to take a moment to congratulate and recognize a couple of our officers for some outstanding achievements this semester. Our Chapter President, Leanna Shields was just awarded the Student of the Year Award by SMCC President Ronald Cantor. Also, our V.P. of Leadership, Jason Glynn, was selected to be one of 14 Maine community college students to represent our state on the All Maine Academic Team, and he was also chosen as the Coca-Cola New Century Scholar!! This award is given to the top scoring scholar of every state, and next weekend he will be flying down to Washington D.C to attend the American Association of Community Colleges President’s Breakfast to accept the award!!

Alpha Chi Nu is holding an Induction Ceremony for all new Phi Theta Kappa members at SMCC. Friends and family are welcome to attend and share in the celebration of your achievements! The Induction Ceremony will be held on April 13^th in Jewett Hall at the South Portland SMCC Campus, at 6 PM, however, all inductees must arrive by 5:30 PM. If you had a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher, then you should have received a letter or email inviting you to join PTK. You must accept the invitation by April 9^th.

If didn’t receive an invitation and you think you should have, or if you have other questions and/or comments, please stop by the Cesil Office, contact the Chapter President by email: leanna.shields@yahoo.com, or through Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/alpha.chi.nu. Be sure to give us a “like” while you’re there, to stay updated on Alpha Chi Nu events and news!

If you received a letter but are worried about the $80 one-time fee, think of it as an investment to your future. There are numerous reasons and rewards for joining PTK. Not only does it open the doors to scholarships, discounts, and transfer scholarships, but it makes your transcript stand out above the rest!

If you want to be even more involved and stand out head-and-shoulders above the rest, consider joining our incoming Officer Team!! Here you will really get a chance to shine and make a huge impact on our community. Just look what we did this year: we started a food pantry!! Wouldn’t you like something like that on your resume?

The time involved to be an officer is really not much; we have weekly meetings, typically held on Thursday’s from 12:30-1:30, and commit on average 2-3 hours a week towards chapter activities, including the meeting. We are now seeking out our stars to continue this semester’s success so if you’re interested, contact us or stop by the Cesil Office!!

In other nuz, a bagel sale to benefit Alpha Chi Nu and the Captain’s Cupboard is ongoing every Thursday morning from 8 AM to 11 AM in the Campus Center of SMCC’s South Portland Campus. Be sure to pick up a delicious bagel and/or a hot coffee to start your morning with a good deed! A bagel or a coffee is only a dollar, while a combination of one of each is a steal at $1.75! ACN would like to thank Mister Bagel in South Portland’s MillCreek Plaza for donating the bagels for our fundraiser; their contributions to the community are deeply appreciated!

The Captain’s Cupboard is SMCC’s student-run food pantry, located in the Captain’s House on the corner of Fort Road and Mckernan Drive, on the South Portland campus. The pantry is available to everyone with a valid student I.D. Stop by and check it out yourself or message us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheCaptainsCupboard to find out more.

Phi Theta Kappa, as the international honor society for community colleges, offers a number of great prospects for students seeking to get the most out of their community college experience. Members should start at PTK.org, Phi Theta Kappa’s official website. There is lots of information about all of PTK’s programs such as CollegeFish.org, the Five Star Chapter program, Competitive Edge, access to the E-portfolio, the Community College Completion Corps, and of course, tons of scholarships for community college and transfer students!

The CollegeFish program is PTK’s transfer student assistance program, designed to ease the transition from a two-year to a four-year college by providing access to a user-friendly database of colleges and scholarships. Students can use custom search criteria to select colleges and scholarships; the criterion includes religious affiliations, degree desired, application requirements, and much more. Students can then save colleges and scholarships and track their application progress as they advance.

Five Star Status for a chapter involves working with other active members of PTK; your chapter at SMCC is Alpha Chi Nu! You and your Chapter Officers will develop projects and improvements to meet the star system requirements, and when all requirements are met, Five Star Status is awarded to your Chapter and you are recognized internationally as a dedicated PTK team!

Individual members can also achieve Five Star Status by participating in Competitive Edge and the E-portfolio. Competitive Edge is designed to increase your professional skills and knowledge about PTK, and tracks your progress so you can use it as part of a resume. Pledge to complete with the Community College Completion Corps, or C4, to make the most of your two-year experience by getting your Associate’s degree before you leave SMCC! The best part of all is that these services and many more opportunities are completely free to all PTK members who want to take advantage of them, so check out PTK.org today, sign up, and get involved!!!