2021 Winter
Pledge/Rush News
The Pledge/ Rush Committee is in charge of organizing logistics, events, and the pledge curriculum for recruitment of new members of AKPsi. This winter, the Rush/Pledge Committee elected new Masters of Rituals, Hosshini Suraj and Tanaya Bhakat, who will be leading the upcoming Spring rush cycle.
Professional News
The Professional Committee provides resources for brothers to explore career choices through hosting workshops, industry-specific informational sessions, and networking events. This past winter quarter, the Professional Committee focused on strengthening our UNITY Tech and Finance programming to help our brothers prepare for the upcoming recruiting season. In addition, the Professional Committee introduced many new professional development opportunities, including the Chat with Booth Professors Series, Finance Vertical Industry Series, and Alumni Panel Series to help brothers explore different career possibilities. In February, the Professional Committee also successfully held our first-ever virtual Brunch with Booth, an AKPsi flagship event that pairs undergraduate students to speak with Booth students through 30-minute coffee chats. This year, we had Booth students with diverse experiences ranging from consulting, investment banking, private equity, investment management, accounting, real estate, to corporate roles. Next quarter, the Professional Committee hopes to continue its ongoing professional series, implement mentor-mentee pairings between older and younger brothers based on career interests, and brainstorm ways to organize our existing programming schedule better.
Social News
The Social/Service committee importantly serves as the social heart of AKPsi, overseeing the planning of social and service events for brothers to participate in and to give back to the larger community. In tandem with our AKPsi's dedication to community service, unity, and brotherhood, Social/Service committee planned a variety of virtual events this winter quarter to keep brothers engaged with the fraternity no matter where they were located. Throughout the weeks, we had fun weekly themes, such as book recommendations, self-care activities & motivational quotes, favorite snacks, favorite childhood games etc., which allowed brothers to reminisce and share about our childhoods and lives through posting on our very active AKPsi meme page on Facebook. Additionally, we hosted biweekly live virtual Zoom sessions aligned with the weekly themes, such as game night, meditation during midterm week, as well as many other study break events where brothers were able to bond and catch up or just study in silence with other brothers. For our service events, we gave back to our local community through our Notes of Inspiration event, where we partnered with Back2School (Illinois education nonprofit) for brothers to write encouraging cards to children going back to school during the pandemic. The handwritten, personal notes were all very touching (see below!). In addition, brothers also sent Valentine's Day e-cards to the St. Jude's hospital, which we hope the patients enjoyed dearly. The Social/Service committee has been working very diligently to ensure that brothers are included and engaged with the fraternity whether they are in Chicago or not, and hopefully provide a space for brothers to escape to and not feel overwhelmed with as this has truly been a challenging time for all of us.
Marketing News
The marketing committee is responsible for every and all marketing activities on behalf of AKPsi Beta Epsilon, ranging from event marketing to social media. For the winter quarter, the marketing committee launched a new design theme for our Instagram account, as well as started new digital marketing initiatives like birthday posts and creating new story covers. We continued to coordinate with other committees to create marketing materials for professional and social/service events—these included the Masterclass Series, Brunch with Booth, and Social Impact Fundraisers. The marketing committee also created a new Spotify theme for this rush cycle, creating a spring rush video and social media countdown posts. New merchandise ideas are also currently in development. The marketing committee elected Sean Ji as the new marketing committee head—we are very excited for what’s to come in the spring!
Finance News
The Finance Committee manages the spring pledge finance challenge/stock pitch; we also host a finance speaker series of brothers and professionals. For the winter quarter, the finance committee mainly worked on outreach and collaborating with the Pledge/Rush committee. We reached out and collected a spreadsheet of Booth alumni as well as potential organizations for future collaborations and partnerships. For the latter half of the quarter, we worked with the Pledge/Rush to plan the upcoming spring rush cycle and receive feedback from the previous rush cycle. We also held elections for the new committee heads who will be Martin Long and Kriti Dugar!
Diversity & Inclusion News
Our Diversity & Inclusion Committee spearheads our initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The committee works on creating a welcoming environment for all members through initiatives like the annual climate survey, Conversation Series: Mental Health in the Business Space (founded by Nadia Redza, Vicki Chen, and Kelly Zheng), and implicit bias training to improve our interview process. Furthermore, our D&I Committee focuses on outreach initiatives to reach underrepresented students on the broader campus and increase access to professional resources offered through the AKPsi MasterClass series.
As a committee we worked on 3 main events this quarter - Impact Fundraiser for Austin Mutual Aid, MasterClass: Tell Me About Yourself with Wanda Echavarria, and Outreach initiatives to propel long-term partnership with culture minority RSOs. All three events concluded with much success, and we are continuing our effort to expand on these partnerships to connect with more underrepresented students at UChicago. Furthermore, the Conversation Series: Mental Health in the Business Space initiative kicked off with great success.