Celebrating Chapaters: 2008 Year End Awards

Congratulations to the chapters that were given awards at Convention this month! It's a great accomplishment and you all should be proud of a great year! It was also really cool to see Rashmi and Abby hand out their awards!

The Rashmi Khanna Award: 2008 CASE - Omicron
The Abby McDonald Award: 2008 Penn State - Lambda

The Service Award: 2008 CASE - Omicron

The Senior Award: 2008 Leanne Smith (Purdue - Alpha); Marcie Aydelotte (CASE - Omicron)

Lifetime Achievement: 2008 Beth Holloway (Purdue - Alpha)

Alumna Officer Award: 2008 Uma Staehler (Purdue - Alpha)

Beth Holloway was given the 1st ever lifteime achievement award for her contributions to women in engineering and PSR. Also for the first time, the Rising to Excellence Award was given to Case-Omicron!

Congratulations to the 12th NC! Thank you to the 11th NC!

The National Convention elected our 12th National Council of Phi Sigma Rho at National Convention 2009! Here are our new council members:

President: Nikki Yovanof, Lambda: president [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Standards: Becky Frye, Kappa: vpofstandards [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Finance: Kellan Ponikiewicz, Lambda: vpoffinance [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Communications: Kristen Waters, Lambda: vpofcommunications [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Collegiate Affairs: Teresa Phillips, Theta: vpofcollegiateaffairs [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Alumnae Affairs: Sara DaSilva, Zeta: vpofalumnaeaffairs [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Programming: Minna Krejci, Omicron: vpofprogramming [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Expansion: Cate Landry, Lambda: vpofexpansion [at] phisigmarho [dot] org
VP of Publications: Jennifer Andy, Omicron: vpofpublications [at] phisigmarho [dot] org

Thank you to the 11th National Council for all of your hard work! Penguin Shout-out to the past NC officers:
Sara DaSilva, President
Vivian Robertson, VP of Standards
Allison Lenhoff, VP of Finance
Lindsay Gelorme, VP of Communications
Tracy Egut, VP of Collegiate Affairs
Monique Chinchar, VP of Alumnae Affairs
Nikki Yovanof, VP of Programming
Sharon James, VP of Expansion
Meghan Edwards, VP of Publications

National Convention 2009 - Follow Up

A lot went on last weekend at convention! You'll be hearing more about the announcements and other follow up in the next few weeks though. Please don't hesitate to email National Council with any questions or comments. But if you were there, please make sure to fill out the feedback form:
Click Here to take survey

And if you have pictures, please send them to Sigmand@phisigmarho.org! Check out what we have so far here!

National Convention 2009 - The Big Day!

On Saturday at Convention, we had so much fun celebrating that we didn't get a chance to tell you all about the day! What a great celebration it was! Look for more information and details soon - but here are some of the highlights!

We started out the morning with the legislative session where we voted on some proposals and held elections for the 12th National Council of Phi Sigma Rho! Congratulations to our new officers and the ritual committee for a job well done.

After the legislative session, we had a great awards lunch where we got to thank our convention volunteers, present chapter and alumnae awards, and hear from our Founders! Abby, Rashmi, and Christine all took a few minutes to talk about their experiences and their thoughts on PSR. Between some of the awards and their speech, we had a very emotional event and some inspiring moments.

The afternoon was filled with roundtable discussions, meetings, and other activities including the Foundation Hospitality Suite for donors. All day, the Phi Rho Lounge was filled with people and amazing historical items. You could also see a table completely covered with donations for the penguin drive for the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh.

The final celebration of the weekend was our Pyramid Builders Award Banquet where we honored sisters for the top 25 significant contributions to the sorority. Our MC's did an amazing job - Christine, Kristin, Minna, Leanna, and Lisa were great! And our sisters have been truly inspiring over the last 25 years - we cannot wait to see what the next 25 hold for us!!! (Stay tuned for more ideas for the next 25 years from Convention!)

We found out about a special surprise at the banquet too - Christine Jackson and the Foundation raised $10,000 this weekend! What an amazing accomplishment - thank you to all of our generous donors. We are so excited about the potential that all these donations can bring to future sorority events.

The celebrating lasted well into the evening when the Pitt-Zeta chapter hosted a Murder Mystery night that was quite a hit and the other alumnae and actives hit the dance floor all night! Look for pictures soon - we had a blast! How many other sorority girls can say they danced all night with their Founders?

Congratulations on 25 years Phi Sigma Rho! We hope you all had as much fun celebrating as we did!

National Convention 2009

Today was quite an eventful day at Convention! We started off the day with an alumnae workshop on finance and wealth management as well and LEAP workshops on personality styles, 5-year planning, team management, and ritual. While the actives worked hard with the LEAP programming, the alumnae had a lovely lunch with guest speaker Don Engel talking about stewardship and then spent a nice afternoon getting together and hearing about all the wonderful things PSR has done in the last 25 years from Dayton-Gamma Alumna and past Executive Director, Amy Mazzanti in Phi Rho 101.

The celebrations really got off to a good start later in the evening when we hopped on the buses to head down to Station Square for the night! A slight rain delay forced our group picture to inside the station from Mt. Washington (pictures to come soon!). With dinner, shopping, and sightseeing (once the rain cleared up), the rest of the evening was a lot of fun! The PSR Foundation also had some fun hosting a hospitality suite for their alumnae donors this evening. And we all got a chance to spend time with one of our Founders, Abby (MacDonald) Schwartz and another charter member, Christine (Mooney) Jackson! Look for more news from them after tomorrow's events too! Can't wait to share all the fun of our big day of meeting and celebrations with you tomorrow!

Kicking-off Convention 2009!

National Convention 2009 kicked-off tonight with a few fun events! We hosted about 70 people at the meet & greet followed by the State of the Sorority Address and Q&A with National Council and the Foundation. After that, we kicked off the celebration with some karaoke thanks to the talents our Pitt-Zeta actives and our national volunteer Minna Krejci.

We're so excited to be in Pittsburgh this weekend and can't wait to see how the LEAP workshops and alumnae sessions go tomorrow. We hope to keep you all updated on the activities of the weekend as we celebrate silver!

Convention this week!

I am so excited for Convention this week! I can't wait to meet many of you who I haven't met, and see those of you I haven't seen in years! I am excited to renew our hope and goals for the next 25 years as well!

If you're going to Convention, please feel free to discuss any of your goals for the Sorority with the current and future National Council members. Our strategic plan mirrors the goals we hear about from the sisterhood, so speak up!

We'll be sending as many updates as we can from the Convention, so stay tuned!

PRL!
Sara Dasilva, National President