October 31 2016

Chapter Spotlight – BGS Gives Back

On September 26, 2016, the University of West Florida’s Beta Gamma Sigma chapter read children’s books with business themes to preschool children in the UWF Educational Research Center for Child Development. The UWF Business Specialist Librarian, Shari Johnson, and the UWF Beta Gamma Sigma Chapter President and Professor of Management/MIS, Julie Ann Williams, worked to identify appropriate children’s books with business themes. Since BGS is a business honor society, the goal for their service project was to introduce to children business themes that included entrepreneurship, banking, supply chain management, project management, and team work.  Beta Gamma Sigma members read several different books to the children, including World in a Supermarket (a story about the grocery supply chain), The Berenstain Bears Jobs around Town (observations of various organizations and careers in the community), The Bizeebee Family Business (a story about a family honey business that introduces the concept of entrepreneurship), and My Pink Piggy Bank (a story about a child’s first bank) to more than a dozen children in a four-year old class. Overall, both the children and the BGS members found the experience very rewarding.

What does your chapter have planned to give back this year? Make sure to share your volunteer efforts with Beta Gamma Sigma at https://betagammasigma.org/bgs-gives-back 

Involve Your Business School Faculty

Now is a great time to begin involving faculty in your BGS chapter! Faculty can be invited to any BGS events, participate in the recognition ceremony, offer their class time for tapping, and help increase membership acceptances. Faculty are a great resource for your BGS chapter as they can portray the importance of BGS and the privilege of being invited membership. Ask your faculty to follow-up on invitations that offered to their students. This helps students know the importance of being eligible for BGS membership. 

One particularly great way to involve faculty in your chapter, is to offer a Professor of the Year award. This award recognizes an outstanding faculty member within the Business school. This award is generally presented at your chapter’s recognition ceremony or a special event for the professor. For more information about the award, visit our website or submit a supply order for the medallion ($25 USD) in the Chapter Management System (CMS).

CMS Quick Tip: Enter All Invitees into the CMS

When entering your information into the CMS for your upcoming ceremony, it’s very important to remember to input all invited members (including faculty), not just those who have already accepted. This will ensure no eligible students will miss the opportunity to be recognized.  

Occasionally, some students cannot or do not accept membership during the initial period in which they’re invited. Nonetheless, by adding them to the CMS, you’re creating a record of the students’ eligibility to receive invitation for membership. This allows BGS Global HQ staff to verify students’ eligibility, as we will give them another chance to accept membership through our re-invite program—which, of course, can increase your chapter’s acceptance rates.  Since the invitation to membership never expires, it also helps us when verifying whether or not a student was actually invited to membership prior to adding them to the CMS.

Be sure to add all your eligible students and faculty for your upcoming recognition ceremony!

Financial Assistance Fund Availability

Have any of your students expressed that they would like to accept membership in Beta Gamma Sigma, but they do not have the funds to cover the membership fee? In case you weren’t aware, we have an emergency fund available to assist those students who are invited to membership but cannot afford the membership fee on their own. We hope that your Business School or Chapter can offer the student full or partial financial assistance. If this is not possible, you have the ability to draw funds from our Financial Assistance Fund (formerly known as the Emergency Membership Fund). This program is run on a first come, first served basis. The maximum allotted amount BGS will cover for a student is the standard membership fee amount ($75 USD). You are limited to using these funds for up to two students per chapter, per academic year. 

If one of your students requires financial assistance, please reach out to your Chapter Manager on the student’s behalf. We ask that you encourage students who use this fund to donate back to the program in the future so we can continue to assist invited students in need of financial assistance for the membership fee. 

For more information on this program, please visit the Financial Assistance Fund page on the BGS website.

Recap of the Chicago, IL Collegiate Chapter Training Seminar

Our first Collegiate Chapter Training Seminar of the 2016-2017 academic year was held in Chicago, IL. We had a total of 17 chapter contacts meet with us to discuss the organization, share best practices and gain more knowledge on the CMS. The staff was able to build a connection with the chapter contacts and gather insight on the experiences of our our chapter contacts. Chapter contacts were also able to share ideas and exchange contact information to share ideas throughout the academic year.  We had the pleasure of having several chapter contacts who have not established a chapter yet participate in the training seminar. It was a great opportunity for them to speak with chapter contacts to learn more about their chapters firsthand. We truly enjoyed meeting everyone and hope everyone found the training useful!

Our next training seminars will take place February 16-17, 2017 in Dallas, TX and March 9-10, 2017 in Seattle, WA. You can learn more about the training seminars and register for an upcoming seminar here. 

We encourage Chapter Officers to attend a training seminar once every three years. Don’t forget that if you attend the training seminar, your chapter will also earn 5 points per attendee towards the Collegiate Chapter Honor Roll for three consecutive years.  

GEICO Scholarship Opportunity

In 2016, GEICO awarded more than $90,000 in Achievement Awards to undergraduate students from across the country! We would like to invite your students to participate in the 2017 GEICO Achievement Award Program. This program is not limited to BGS members.

This long-standing GEICO tradition is designed to recognize exceptional college students majoring in business, mathematics, computer science and related fields. 

The program requires that applicants:

• Are currently enrolled at a four-year school on a full-time basis
• Possess sophomore or junior status/classification
• Have at least a 3.0 overall GPA
• Are majoring in business, computer science, mathematics or a related program (including economics, MIS, statistics)
• Have demonstrated leadership within their campus and/or community

You can simply direct your students to geico.jobs/achievement where they can learn more about the GEICO Achievement Award Program. Eligible students are able to apply beginning Oct. 4, 2016. Interested students are required to submit an online application, resume, unofficial transcript, letter of recommendation, and a short essay. All online applications must be submitted by Nov. 17, 2016. Recipients will be announced in the spring semester 2017. 

We’re so pleased to be able to offer this GEICO program to your students. Encourage all eligible students to apply today!

Reminder about Student Officer Onboarding Webinars

The Student Officer Onboarding Webinars have been off to a great start. These webinars provide Student Officers with guidance on how they can assist the Chapter Advisor. They also provide useful resources and tips to promote the chapter while allowing the Student Officers to share their experiences. Although the fall webinars have already concluded, we will have additional webinars in the spring. The dates for these webinars have not been finalized, but we will provide you with that information once it is available. We also have a LinkedIn page for Student Officers, and they should continue to participate in the group discussions. For individualized support, your Student Officers can reach out to Brandon Taylor at btaylor@betagammasigma.org.

If your Student Officer was unable to participate in a webinar this fall, they can view a recording here: https://betagammasigma.org/student-officer-onboarding-webinars

As a reminder, if you haven’t done so already, please submit your Student Officer names and position titles to your Chapter Manager so they can receive all pertinent information relevant to their role.

Update on Membership Goal for 2016-2017

In our first edition of Chapter Notes, we shared with you our new membership goal for 2015-16. By sharing this goal we hope that you will keep us accountable and that it will help you understand how the Collegiate Chapters impact the Society. As a reminder, for 2016-2017 our goal is to induct 28,600 new members. This goal includes all new members who accept membership from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017.

We plan to reach this goal by increasing our marketing efforts, continuing our early induction initiatives, offering more compelling programs and membership benefits, and encouraging chapters to engage their students. Here are some things you can do to assist us in meeting and exceeding our goal:

• Invite all eligible students and add them all to the CMS
• Follow up with students and encourage them to accept membership
• Send reminder emails via the CMS
• Make sure your students complete their profiles in a timely manner

The current number of new members for 16-17 as of October 31: 2996

We are counting on and appreciate all your efforts and support as we aim to reach this goal!