Fall 2010 Carnation

Delta Sigma Phi | Fall 2010

letter from the editor

Readers, It’s an exciting time for me. Just after Founders Day, my wife and I will be welcoming our first child into the world – a baby boy who I’m hoping will become a Delta Sig legacy some day. We’re extremely excited, and I think if he can become as great a person as many Delta Sigs who I’ve met or heard about over the years, we will be tremendously happy.

I learned about one such Delta Sig back as we were just finding out about the pregnancy – just after the last issue of The Carnation hit the mail. Like after every issue, I receive a number of obituaries of brothers we should include in the next issue’s Bond Eternal section. The alumnus who passed on this obituary said I should really take a look at it. When I did, what it said didn’t surprise me. It turns out the deceased brother was quite involved in the Fraternity on the local level, served his country for 30 years in the U.S. Army earning the rank of Colonel upon his retirement, was a family man who attended nearly all of his grandchildren’s ball games, and was an avid golfer and friend to everyone with whom he came into contact. He was someone I’d be proud to be associated with – someone we should all strive to be.

Each and every time I am able to take the time to learn about our brothers, whether through an obituary or through something else I receive, I am struck by the same thing – the vast majority joined the Fraternity and then made a difference in their communities, their careers, and with their families. They all embody what our founders wanted Delta Sigs to be, and what the Fraternity continues to build in its training and educational programming today – leaders.

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After reading that obituary and thinking about how it embodied many others I had seen throughout my years on staff, I couldn’t help but think of the baby we’re bringing into the world in December. I just hope my wife and I can raise a child who one day makes an impact on those around him like this alumnus obviously had. I think by bringing him up teaching him the values we learn through our time in Delta Sig, he’ll be on the right track to make that impact.

And even if he never joins the Fraternity, we’ll have someone else who is living the Fraternity’s values on a daily basis. How could we go wrong with that?

I hope you enjoy this issue of The Carnation, and wish me luck that I don’t pass out in the delivery room. That’s my biggest fear!

YITBOS,

Bruce Hammond, Ohio Northern ’98 Editor PS – The brother who entered the Bond Eternal who I reference above was Robert “Budgie” Romines, Stephen F. Austin ’63. A special thanks to Jim Kyle, Stephen F. Austin ’65, one of Budgie’s roommates at Stephen F. Austin, for encouraging me to look at his obituary.

Contents

CARNATION THE

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Editor Bruce Hammond, Ohio Northern ’98

Feature: Undergraduate Entrepreneurs: from Backpacks to Briefcases

33 Two Delta Sig Perspectives of the BP Oil Disaster

46 A Day in the Life: Bobby Sharma, Duke ’92, Vice President & General Counsel, NBA Development League

DEPARTMENTS 2 4 16 24 27 30

Letter from the Editor News Feed Business & Finance Health & Fitness Government & Politics Leadership & Education

40 44 46 50 52 55

Tech Trends Travel & Tourism Sports Books by Brothers In Their Own Words Bond Eternal

Mission: The Carnation is a lifestyle magazine meant to entertain, educate and inspire the members of Delta Sigma Phi to become better men and lead better lives, while also educating and entertaining other readers who may not be members.

Contributing Writers Bob Coates, San Diego State ’57 Nick Gerhardt, Missouri ’08 Jeffrey Gordon, Valparaiso ’91 Bill Lawhorn, UW LaCrosse ’93 James R. Lucas, Missouri S&T ’69 Stephen Munna, Georgia Tech ’03 Walid Neaz, Georgia Tech ’06 Bob Westby, SD School of Mines ’67 Art Director Shelle Design, Incorporated Address publication materials and correspondence with national office to: Delta Sigma Phi 1331 North Delaware Street Indianapolis, IN 46202 (317) 634-1899 FAX: (317) 634-1410 E-mail: info@deltasig.org Web: www.deltasig.org THE CARNATION OF DELTA SIGMA PHI (USPS 091-020), official publication of Delta Sigma Phi, 1331 N. Delaware St., Indianapolis, IN 46202, is published semiannually. Publication postage paid at Indianapolis, IN and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to THE CARNATION OF DELTA SIGMA PHI, 1331 N. Delaware St., Indianapolis, IN 46202. Subscription price to non-members is $8.00 per year. Single copies $3.00.

Copyright 2010 by the Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity; 1331 N. Delaware St., Indianapolis, IN 46202. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

THE CARNATION® and Delta Sigma Phi® are registered trademarks of Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity, Inc.

www.deltasig.org

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News Feed Fraternity Names 2010 Pyramid of Excellence Winners Seven outstanding chapters will be the recipients of the 2010 Pyramid of Excellence Award, Delta Sigma Phi’s top award for its chapters. The winning chapters, and a little about each, are below: Alpha Alpha – University of Illinois The Alpha Alpha Chapter has a 3.12 cumulative Grade Point Average, and during the 2009-10 academic year had 81% of its members involved in another campus organization. Chapter members participated in nearly 750 hours of community service, and raised $2,500 for the Mental Health Center of Champaign County.

Alpha Delta – University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill The Alpha Delta Chapter excelled in recruitment during the 2009-10 academic year, growing 33% between 2008-09 and 2009-10. In addition, the chapter averaged more than 20 hours of community service per member, and 100% of the chapter’s members were involved in another campus organization during the last academic year.

Alpha Tau – Albion College Alpha Tau Chapter at Albion had a 3.25 Grade Point Average as a group, one of the highest across the Fraternity during the 2009-10 academic year. In addition, the group recruited 18 men to join the chapter last year and 85% of its members are involved in another student organization on campus.

Alpha Upsilon – Kansas State University The Alpha Upsilon Chapter at Kansas State can hang its hat on outstanding leadership within its ranks. Of the chapter, 86% of the members are involved in other campus organizations, while 35% of the chapter holds a leadership position in another campus organization. In addition, Alpha Upsilon completed nearly 1,000 hours of community service in 2009-10.

Beta Mu – Transylvania University Impressively, the Beta Mu Chapter has had the top Grade Point Average among fraternities on its campus for 62 consecutive semesters. In addition, the chapter completed 1,500 hours of community service, has 91% of its chapter members involved in other campus organizations, and 42% of its members hold leadership positions on campus outside the Fraternity.

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Delta Epsilon – Missouri University of Science & Technology The Delta Epsilon Chapter completed nearly 700 hours of community service during the 2009-10 academic year, while having 85% of its members involved in other campus organizations. In addition, 20% of the chapter’s members hold leadership positions in those outside organizations.

Zeta Chi – University of Alabama, Birmingham The Zeta Chi Chapter impressively beat the All Men’s Grade Point Average on campus by .3 points, which shows its commitment to academics. In addition, the chapter completed more than 1,600 hours of community service, which averages to 38 hours per man. They accomplished all of this with 75% of the chapter’s members being involved in other campus organizations.

Congratulations to all seven of the Fraternity’s 2010 Pyramid of Excellence winners.

Fraternity Wins Laurel Wreath Award from the North-American Interfraternity Conference Delta Sigma Phi was honored with the 2010 NorthAmerican Interfraternity Conference (NIC) Laurel Wreath Award for its role in supporting the University Learning Outcomes Assessment (UniLOA) research that resulted in industry altering data on the role fraternities play in the overall college experience. The award was presented in April at the NIC Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Delta Sigma Phi was joined by four other fraternal organizations interested in this research, when all realized that from the UniLOA they also could measure how a man’s fraternity involvement impacts his overall student and membership development.

The findings reveal that fraternity members’ aptitude in each of seven measured areas – critical thinking, self awareness, communication, diversity, citizenship, membership and leadership relationships – was higher than that of their non-fraternity peers. Also revealing was the data-supported conclusion that the time at which a man joins a fraternity has a direct impact on his development in each area.

“Thanks to this partnership we are better able to speak with scientific certainty about the impact of fraternity or sorority membership on student development and growth,” said Peter D. Smithhisler, NIC president and CEO. Alpha Tau Omega, Delta Upsilon, Phi Kappa Tau, and Zeta Tau Alpha shared the 2010 Laurel Wreath Award with Delta Sigma Phi.

The Carnation Wins Award from Fraternity Communications Association Your very own Fraternity publication, The Carnation, received a first place award from the Fraternity Communications Association (FCA) at its annual meeting in May. The magazine received its award in the Persuasive Essay category for its Fall 2009 feature story entitled Mission Possible (With Your Help). According to the judges, “Trying to put together an exciting piece about a Strategic Plan can be difficult. You were able to break it down, explain it, and call your members to action. I was excited to see that the steps suggested were ones that someone could easily act on. Great work!”

This is the second award The Carnation has received from FCA since 2008. Then, it was honored with a second place award in the Human Interest category for its Mission to Warlordistan piece written by Brian Glyn Williams, Stetson ’86, from the Spring 2007 issue.

According to Executive Director, Scott Wiley, “It’s exciting for our organization to be recognized for our publication, something in which we take great pride. We look forward to our award-winning magazine continuing to be a great piece for our brothers.”

In addition to the magazine receiving an award, its designer Michele King from Shelle Design, Inc., received an FCA award as Outstanding Supplier Partner.

Alumni Run for Elected Office A number of Delta Sig alumni have run (or are running) for elected office this year, and we wanted to provide you with a little information about each of them: US Senate • Todd Tiahrt, SD School of Mines ’70 – Tiahrt, a longtime U.S. Congressman from the state of Kansas, received 144,372 votes (45%) but was narrowly defeated in the Republican Primary to replace retiring U.S. Senator Sam Brownback.

US Congress • Tom Reed, Alfred ’91 – Reed is the Republican nominee for New York’s 29th District seat in the U.S. Congress, which was formerly occupied by disgraced former Congressman Eric Massa. Prior to running for Congress, Reed served as the mayor of Corning, New York.

• Rick Wilson, Purdue ’70 – Wilson ran in the Republican Primary for Michigan’s 5th District seat in the U.S. Congress, gaining 44% of the vote. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to win the primary. Prior to his run for Congress, Wilson served for 34 years as an autoworker for GM-Delphi.

• Mike Turner, Ohio Northern ’79 – Turner, who currently serves as the U.S. Representative for Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District, is running for a 5th term in Congress. Prior to serving in Congress, Turner served two terms as the first Republican Mayor of Dayton, Ohio in 25 years.

Illinois Governor • Kirk Dillard, Western Illinois ’75 – Dillard finished second with 20.2% of the votes in the Republican Primary election for Illinois Governor in February. The winner, Bill Brady, received 20.3% of the votes (only approximately 300 more than Brother Dillard).

• Adam Andrzejewski, Northern Illinois ’89 – Andrzejewski also ran in the Republican Primary election for Illinois Governor in February finishing fifth in the seven-person primary with 14.5% of the votes.

Norfolk, Virginia City Council • Tommy Smigiel, Old Dominion ’00 – Smigiel, a former National Teacher of the Year finalist who was profiled in the Spring 2008 issue of The Carnation, won a seat on the Norfolk City Council in May 2010. Smigiel was the underdog going into the race, but pulled out the win by less than 150 votes. He took his seat in July.

2010 Leadership Institute Welcomes 52 Participants and Three Outstanding Alumni Speakers The 2010 Leadership Institute, which concluded in early August, brought 52 students from 31 chapters to Camp Tecumseh in Brookston, Indiana for a five-day intense leadership training experience.

Leadership Institute attendees gather near the sign at the Fraternity Headquarters in Indianapolis as the event concluded.

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News Feed

The 2010 Leadership Institute attendees thank those generous donors to the Delta Sigma Phi Foundation who made the event possible.

Attendees worked through a curriculum that consisted of large and small group sessions, engaging in conversations and exercises to help them become better leaders both within the Fraternity and in all other leadership positions.

In addition to the large and small group sessions, attendees took part in an outdoor ropes course and wilderness challenge meant to put the lessons they learned in the classroom to the test in the field. Attendees rated these elements as top aspects of the event for them.

Attendees were also treated to talks from three accomplished alumni who shared their thoughts on different aspects of leadership.

For more of a firsthand look at the 2010 Leadership Institute, and to see videos of attendees and speakers from the event, be sure to check out the 2010 Leadership Institute blog at http://liwatch2010.wordpress.com.

• Doug Gehrman, Arizona State ’59, who serves as a consultant, professor and author on leadership, spoke about becoming a transformational leader through living one’s values.

• Bob Bloom, Hartwick ’71, who serves as the President and CEO of ColorTyme, Inc., talked about leadership through understanding how to create change when it’s necessary.

• Allen Fore, Eureka ’86, who serves as a community relations leader for energy company, Kinder Morgan, spoke about leadership in practice, and how the aspects of leadership the students were learning are put into practice every day.

(L-R) Kelly Strough, Idaho ’08, Isauro Saldana, Oregon ’09, and Matt Welch, Utah State ’09 celebrate after completing the rock wall at the 2010 Leadership Institute.

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Save the Date for the 2011 Convention The start of the 2011 Delta Sigma Phi Convention is less than nine months away, so Save the Date to be with us July 28-31, 2011 at the Omni Orlando at ChampionsGate to connect with brothers from across the country.

The theme of the 2011 Convention, which is embodied in the Convention logo, is Leadership. Loyalty. Legacy.

These words correspond to three important aspects of one’s Delta Sigma Phi experience, and each also corresponds to one of the three pillars of the 2025 Strategic Plan – Building Strong Chapters, Building Strong Leaders, and Becoming the Strongest Fraternity.

Leadership corresponds to the leadership training and education that today’s undergraduate members are receiving through events like the Leadership Institute, the Regional Leadership Academies, and The Summit program.

Loyalty, or the Pearl of Great Price, is what Delta Sigma Phi hopes to build and continue in its alumni ranks through engagement opportunities, regular interaction, and lifelong networking opportunities.

Legacy corresponds to the business aspect of the Convention and the Vision 2025 Strategic plan, and how the legacy that the Fraternity is creating today will impact future Delta Sigs.

Different from years’ past, the 2011 Convention will include more time for attendees to enjoy the Orlando area how they choose to, whether that is attending one of the theme parks, playing golf at the course on site at the hotel, or just laying and relaxing by one of the many pools with fellow brothers and guests.

The 2011 Convention will again offer a full spouse/guest program full of opportunities for spouses and guests of all ages to enjoy the area.

And in exciting news, the event will bring back the very popular History of the Ritual discussion, led by Past Grand Council President Loren Mall, Kansas State ’58.

The 2011 Convention will be a can’t-miss event, so mark your calendars now to take part in one of Delta Sig’s best events!

Online registration for the Convention will be live just after the new year, and will be found on the Delta Sig web site at www.deltasig.org.

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Where Are They Now? Following Up with a Successful Leadership Institute Graduate

Luke Fuszard Texas ’04

What have you been doing since you graduated from the University of Texas?

While I was still an undergraduate, I knew the next major step in my career was to pursue my MBA. Therefore I took the GMAT exam in the fall of 2003 in the hopes that I would be able to begin my graduate studies immediately following UT. Unfortunately, I wasn’t admitted to a single program that spring so I had to improvise. Luckily, after leaving Austin and the Eta Chapter in 2004, I found a sales position with Cisco Systems in North Carolina. I loved the job but I knew it was only a temporary stop en route to graduate school. After three years in technology sales, I was accepted to the Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government in a joint MBA/Masters of Public Administration program.

My three years in Cambridge concluded in May 2010 when I graduated, and I was fortunate enough to find a job in hospital administration with Tenet Healthcare in Birmingham, Alabama.

When did you attend the Leadership Institute, and what is your best memory from the event?

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Wykoff, had attended the Leadership Institute two years prior to my initiation and spoke very highly of the event.

Rob encouraged me to complete the LI application as soon as it was available, and I was fortunate enough to be accepted. I participated in LI during the summer after my freshman year, which happened to be the same time that the national fraternity was debating the merits of the alcohol-free housing policy. Tensions were high going into the event, as the alumni, and even the undergraduates themselves, weren’t sure exactly how the debate would unfold.

Much to my surprise, the conversations that ensued were all extremely mature and collegial. Many participants had differing points of view, but all opinions were welcomed in an open and honest environment. In the end, the vast majority of LI participants left the event feeling their voice had been heard and an agreeable compromise had been reached. That series of exchanges exemplified the true strength of our brotherhood, and it proved to me that if Delta Sigma Phi could successfully navigate those treacherous waters, the fraternity could survive any obstacle put in its path as long as we pooled our collective strengths.

What are some lessons from the LI that you’ve taken with you?

One of the most impressive aspects of my Leadership Institute experience was the effort put forth by the alumni volunteers in ensuring the event was a success. They were working professionals who felt so strongly about the ideals of Delta Sigma Phi that they took time away from their jobs and families to spend one week with a group of undergraduates during their fraternity experience. The dedication exhibited by these volunteers left an indelible impression upon me as they truly personified the Pearl of Great Price.

Despite the fact that I have moved a lot in recent years, I have always tried to volunteer with my local Delta Sig

community, much like those alumni did at the LI. No matter what my involvement with the fraternity has been or will be, I honestly believe I could never do enough to pay back everything that this organization has given to me. However, I will certainly spend the rest of my life trying to close that gap as much as possible.

What are some of your future goals for your career?

I have a list of five, ten and twenty year goals that are constantly in flux. That being said, I’m excited to enter the healthcare industry, which I view as a perfect intersection of my two passions – business and government.

My hope is to build a career in hospital administration, and eventually parlay that experience into a role in the public sector on either the state or federal level.

As a successful graduate of the LI, what is a piece of leadership advice that you’d give to today’s undergraduate members?

Say “Yes” to everything, no matter how menial the task. If you complete it quicker than expected and better than expected, the requests from others will increase and your credibility will rise.

My fraternity experience began with simply volunteering to lead small efforts, and those experiences snowballed into bigger opportunities.

Eventually those leadership efforts within the fraternity expanded to new ones outside of Delta Sigma Phi. From student government to community service groups, there are hundreds of ways to build your leadership repertoire.

It may not seem like it at the time, but college goes by in the blink of an eye, so it’s important to get involved early and often. The best way to do that is to simply say “Yes” and volunteer to lead whenever the opportunity is presented (including the Leadership Institute).

By Nick Gerhardt, Missouri ’08

Many Delta Sig undergraduates successfully combine being students and entrepreneurs.

It’s a combination that is becoming more prevalent across the brotherhood.

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College students today have embraced the American adage of the Land of Opportunity like never before. Where their fathers and grandfathers generally found a company for which to work, dug in and hoped to climb the corporate ladder, today’s students have embraced a different approach entirely.

Forget climbing. Let’s build our own ladder.

This old model looks broken anyway, they say.

This is the age of the student entrepreneur. No longer a trade restricted by any intrinsic necessity for startup capital and significant real-world experience, entrepreneurship has lost that exotic appearance of exclusivity.

According to Junior Achievement’s 2009 poll, 51 percent of teenagers hope to start their own business, and given the number explosive success stories like Mark Zuckerburg and his Facebook, a sizable percentage of them truly believe they have a legitimate shot at succeeding.

Perhaps companies like Amway/Quixtar, which built their success around creating and empowering “independent business owners” have fueled this trend. Perhaps social networking sites, which take the big, scary unknown world and simplify it down to a series of interconnected tangible networks through which anyone can find anyone else, have helped fuel the trend.

Perhaps the fact Generation Y grew up with a blankie in one hand and a computer mouse in the other makes creating the surface indicators of a legitimate business, such as a sleek web site, feel no more daunting than making a MySpace page.

Perhaps it’s a perceived lack of job security.

Regardless of the reasons, innumerous though they must be, one can’t deny this rebirth of the American dream. With

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a credit card and a good idea, it seems, a student can do pretty much anything.

Students at the University of Missouri started a customizable cookie company, and paid their tuition by combining Reese’s pieces, Hershey batter, and caramel topping.

Fraternity men in Georgia created a small T-shirt company, capitalizing on irony by publishing anti “Bro” shirts to try to pay their dues. Meanwhile others, like a pair of men in Michigan who started their own valet service, created a company as undergraduates that became their primary source of income in the real world, beyond graduation.

Universities Universities across the nation have begun to embrace the undergraduate entrepreneur.

Forty years ago, only 16 universities in the nation offered some kind of entrepreneurial training, spanning from two courses to a liberal arts minor. By the dawn of the 90s, that number had increased 20 fold. Today, more than 1,600 institutions of higher learning teach young men and women the necessary methods for starting their own businesses.

“Part of it is that the corporate model is not appealing for a lot of students. They think if they want to get a bachelor’s degree, and they have the smarts to make that happen, why

not start their own business?” says Denny Ciganovic, Director of the Career Center at the College of Charleston.

Ciganovic, Franklin & Marshall ’62, says the collegiate approach to teaching entrepreneurship relies heavily on competitions through a national non-profit organization, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE).

The organization bills itself as a vehicle for the mobilization of university students around the world to use the knowledge gained in the classroom to address real world business and economic issues in their communities.

At individual universities, students come up with their own business plans and models for a prospective entrepreneurial opportunity. The best of these bubble to the top and those go on to participate in national SIFE competitions where the best of the best receive awards and, if circumstances befit, could even catch the eye of someone with the resources to help bring that idea to fruition.

As one might expect, innovation and uniqueness play a large role here, and Ciganovic says that mirrors the real world.

“People these days are willing to spend a lot of money on some very unique services or a very unique product.

The market, even though the recession is here, seems to be very receptive for people with that little twist, that little mouse trap,” Ciganovic said.

“These students are more self confident in terms of their ability to create and be successful, and there’s probably some sociological reasons behind that.”

Generation Y Sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss developed the theory of generations in the 1990s, coining the terms Boomers (1943-1963), Generation X (1964-1981) and Generation Y (1982-2000).

According to their theory, each generation possesses a certain character honed by key cultural, economic, and social forces specific to that era.

Scholars across the world label Generation Y as the most educated, assertive and IT-literate batch in history. The world looks a lot smaller to kids who grew up on the information superhighway. They generally take the opportunities offered therein for granted.

This generation sees entrepreneurship not as a hugegamble or a major life decision, but instead view a chance at their own business as just another opportunity, no different from a summer job or an internship.

The advent of social media and this generation’s familiarity with technology seems to have curbed the intimidation factor of starting a business from scratch. Couple that fact

with how most accredited institutions offer introductory entrepreneur classes regardless of major, and these fresh minds have armed themselves with most of the weaponry necessary to inject their own new spin into the marketplace.

Facebook: Lifeblood Recent graduate Ian Swain, Johnson & Wales ’09, confirms the onset of Facebook necessity in the entrepreneurial landscape.

“I use Facebook every hour of every day. That’s the greatest tool for connections. Most of my connections to other promoters and owners happened through Facebook,” Swain said.

Owner of SwainPro, an event planning service out of Pennsylvania, Swain began planning to start the business during his junior year at Johnson & Wales. He officially created the business by purchasing the rights to the web domain Swainpro.com and writing a mission statement the January before his graduation. After he graduated, he moved operations closer to home in Philadelphia.

Every Thursday SwainPro hosts events for Vango Lounge and Skybar, and has a second weekly venue commitment with Marathon in the works to occupy his Saturdays.

“I was contacted through Facebook for my second venue actually. Then I met with them, negotiated the terms and started a new business relationship. In these cities it’s the biggest network possible.”

“Facebook is great; however, as always the most effective way of marketing is still personal communication” Swain added.

Other major events to the company’s credit include a masquerade ball in Philadelphia, back-to-school events, and a major launch event for new partner Marathon.

Swain also credits the Fraternity experience at the Eta Omega chapter as core to his success. Having served as both Public Relations Chairman and Social Chairman, the Fraternity served as a sort of microcosm of the larger environment he would enter later.

“Delta Sig helped a lot. It’s like a small business at the local chapter. It gives you that little taste of business so when you’re branching out, you’re already ready to go.

“And my brothers were the most supportive people I’ve ever met.”

Swain never took any college courses on entrepreneurship, although his school does offer a major in that field of study, because he comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His parents own an exotic luxury travel company, SwainTours, and his older brother started his own technology and network management company.

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Business and that kind of stuff is just kind of common sense to me. Why would I need to teach a fish to swim? I’m already at that point, why would I need to sit there and learn out of a book to do it when I’m already there?

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“I grew up with them talking about business production, so I’ve always had that instinct in my head,” Swain said.

This business constitutes Swain’s second soiree into private enterprise. He spent his high school days founding Rebel Gear, a t-shirt company. He has only worked for an employer not named Ian Swain twice, working at two hotels at the front desk during his college years. He found it to be a more beneficial learning experience to venture out and create something of his own.

“There are no jobs these days; if I can make my own, why not? And being your own boss is always nice,” Swain said.

It is a sentiment echoed across all of our undergraduate business starters.

Shaping the Landscape Success in start-ups happens in a very real way even for those still amidst the undergraduate experience.

Ryan Walsh, NC State ’09, is only a junior, but owns and operates Capital City Groundskeeping.

The gig may sound like just mowing lawns – something Walsh has been doing for cash since age 12 – but they only mow two days out of the week. Nevermind the fact they still conquer 56 yards in those two days, leaving the rest of the company’s time open for projects.

While specializing in all the trimmings of your standard high end landscaping business, Capital City has secured a slew of residential customers in North Raleigh as well as several commercial real estate properties. He even does work on campus.

However, trimming the campus hedges, so to speak, is as close a tie with the entrepreneurial program Walsh has had thus far. Like Ian Swain, he never took any classes before diving headlong into what has developed into a very successful business.

“I’ve been doing this for nine years, from when I was 12, and now it’s so big… I always just wanted to make some money. I can’t see myself working for anybody else,” Walsh said.

“Business and that kind of stuff is just kind of common sense to me. Why would I need to teach a fish to swim? I’m already at that point, why would I need to sit there and learn out of a book to do it when I’m already there?” Walsh said.

North Carolina State offers an entrepreneurship major, which Walsh admits intrigues him.

“I’m kind of looking at that,” he said, and he left it at that.

While Walsh credits the Fraternity with helping to round him out from a business perspective, his business has had more of an impact on the Fraternity.

“I have a few Fraternity brothers that help me. I try to keep those guys busy, they want some money too,” Walsh said.

The Fraternity experience had a measurable impact on all of these undergraduate small business starters.

Two work for him full time, while others help out as the need arises. Currently the Secretary, he credits his local chapter with allowing him to take a step back at times, meet new people, make some friends, and really open up for the first time.

“It’s always good to have your best friends working for you, and at the same time you can always go and have fun with them too,” Walsh said.

Capital City Groundskeeping has enjoyed commendable success in the community already, having been featured in the Raleigh News and Observer as well as North Carolina State University’s Technician, among other accolades.

Walsh still has a sizable chunk of schooling ahead of him, leaving him with a bit of a quandary. “[The company is] at a point where I could just hold my customers now and wait it out until school’s over, or I could hire some crews and allow it to expand. I’m trying to find what’s right for me and the company.”

He seems inclined at the moment to pursue expansion as he finishes out his Turf Management degree.

The Class Approach The aforementioned entrepreneurial classes and the accompanying competitions do have their place among today’s undergraduates, even if we have not seen many of them beneath the umbrella of Delta Sigma Phi. Chris Young, Grand Valley State ’07, a Finance Major, worked in a competitive valet scene in Detroit over the summer. When he returned to school, he and pledge brother John Levandowski hatched the idea to start a valet company of their own closer to school.

“It was very important to be the best in Detroit. Service was everything. Over here, there had been one company for 50 years, and they were satisfied with where they were.

They had a lack of ambition to improve, which gave us an opening to penetrate the market,” Young said.

Young and Levandowski saw an opportunity. By that point they had accrued enough industry know-how to justify bankrolling it themselves during their sophomore year.

“We didn’t have any money; we started it on our credit cards actually. No banks were going to give us a loan.”

So, with little more than a credit card and two men with a background in strategically parking cars, At Your Service Valet came into existence.

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A lot of people liked that we were young and hungry to do it. We would work 30 hours every weekend and made sure there was always an owner present to micromanage everything.

“We brought a big city valet’s competitiveness to a smaller area,” Young said.

The two brothers combined the extracurricular experience with the new age classroom approach.

Grand Valley started an entrepreneurial program two years ago. Young said he “was a big part of it.”

When the program circulated the first entrepreneurial newsletter throughout the business school, Young and Levandowski graced the cover, with an accompanying feature inside.

They participated in an “Idea pitch” competition, taking third. This particular competition offered prize money, and they used those winnings in order to start the company web site, http://atyourservicevalet.com.

Students provide all the content on the web site. It features a very user friendly, smooth interface and some eye catching color isolation photography.

Young says he has learned quite a bit on the outside of formal classroom education since graduating last May. He learned one of his first major lessons at the expense of the company’s first major client.

The managers of that first restaurant had a need for weekday parking that Young and Levandowski overlooked, and it ended up costing them the contract.

“What we should have done is gotten more [parking space] sooner, but we didn’t communicate enough with them to know they were that serious about getting that parking.”

Luckily, they had already secured a second account by that point with a restaurant called Roses. The owner of that restaurant also held the deed to The B.O.B, the biggest restaurant in town. Within six months of working on the smaller account, At Your Service Valet landed a deal for the big one.

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Once they had that under their belt, it gave them “the capital and legitimacy to get business from other companies in the area” Young said.

They had, in effect, finally caught their break. Since then, they have driven up competition in the area. When they started two years ago, there was only one independently run valet spot downtown; now there are ten spots in the Grand Rapids area, and At Your Service Valet runs five of them.

What’s the secret to their success? Call it youthful ambition.

“A lot of people liked that we were young and hungry to do it. We would work 30 hours every weekend and made sure there was always an owner present to micromanage everything” Young said.

They now have 12 full-time employees. Additionally, they brought in a Director of Operations. The two men remain the sole owners of the company.

Having graduated from school, Young said the Fraternity experience is largely behind him, though he credits the surplus of brothers in need of money as a core component of success in the beginning.

“If we ever needed guys, when a big event would pop up and we were understaffed, we had 50 guys at our disposal.”

Taking a Chance For undergrads that have not had as engrained a history in the arena in which they take that entrepreneurial leap, starting off tends to feel a bit more like a gamble.

Two brothers out of Georgia College and State University needed a means to pay for their Fraternity dues.

They concocted a small t-shirt operation during the Spring Semester of 2010. As of right now, they only have one piece of merchandise, although they hope to expand the business if they find a way.

Irony plays a large part in their start-up operation, Bro Gear. Branded on the left pocket, the letters BRO in Greek letter typography. Flip it around to find a humorous tongue and cheek dictionary-style definition of the “bro” pseudonym often clichéd on our campuses nationwide.

“It’s more of a satire type thing. It’s not necessarily bashing ‘bros,’ just an exaggerated form,” said company co-founder Eason Cargo, GCSU ’10.

“The prime reason we started [the business] was to pay our dues,” explained Ryan Shirley, GCSU ’10, Cargo’s partner.

Before undertaking a mass order, they tried to lock down a certain number of guaranteed customers. They asked friends, friends of friends, anyone they could if they would purchase such a shirt. People seemed to really enjoy the idea and so they ordered accordingly. It was their first big lesson in real-world business.

“They all said they would buy the shirts, and we thought ‘who better to help us pay our dues than our own brothers?’”

Shirley said.

“We’ve sold about half of what we ordered. It’s been very much of a learning experience, how to go about investing in something like this, and realizing exactly who will purchase something like this,” Cargo added.

Though they set the price at $18 initially, they “learned a lot about college students in general and how they chose to spend what money they have.” Unless they can find a way to rekindle interest in the shirt, or somehow sell them en masse, they may have to drop the price.

Nevertheless, Shirley still considers the experience a success.

“Just for the fact that it was a learning experience. It showed me that I want to keep doing things like this,” Shirley said.

Shirley says the two made enough money to cover their dues.

He and Cargo plan on staying in the t-shirt business, given the lessons they learned, but currently have their sights set on establishing a hot dog vending cart in downtown Milledgeville, GA. Due to their age, neither of the pair has taken any classes in the Entrepreneurial field at GCSU. Cargo said he has a lot of interest in pursuing that going forward, however.

As Fraternity men, all of these entrepreneurs cited membership in the organization as a premier contributing factor to their success. Whether it was Chris Young having the entities to help park cars to establish At Your Service Valet’s sterling reputation for quick customer service, or Eason Cargo and Ryan Shirley having customers to purchase their shirts right out of the gate, all of our brothers echoed the necessity of Delta Sigma Phi.

To reach out to these young brothers or for more information on their respective businesses, please feel free to contact them or visit their company web sites: SwainPro Event Planning Contact: Ian Swain swainpro.com EIan@swainpro.com facebook.com/SwainPro Capital City Groundskeeping Contact: Ryan Walsh CapitalCityNC.com rmwalsh@ncsu.edu At Your Service Valet Contact: Chris Young atyourservicevalet.com Chris@atyourservicevalet.com Bro Gear Contacts: Eason Cargo and Ryan Shirley Eason Cargo.com EasonCargo@gmail.com Top Schools http://www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges/undergrad/0.html Liverpool Study on Generation Y http://www.liv.ac.uk/news/features/generation-y.htm Teens who want to start a business of their own http://www.ja.org/files/polls/JA-Teen-Entrepreneurial-Poll-09.pdf Reuters: Start-ups replacing summer jobs for students http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65M3A420100623

If you started a business as a student, please let us know about it by e-mailing info@deltasig.org. We’ll follow up in the next issue with more

undergraduate entrepreneurs.

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ALUMNI PROFILE JACK GREAF, YOUNGSTOWN STATE ’64

When you hear ‘Mitsubishi’, you likely think about the large Japanese company best known in the United States for its cars and heavy machinery like power plants.

What you probably don’t think about are packaged ozone water treatment systems, propulsion systems for trains and mass transit, or the scoreboards you see in stadiums and at golf tournaments across the country…

However, the areas you probably weren’t thinking about as they relate to Mitsubishi are exactly the areas that alumnus Jack Greaf, Youngstown State ’64, heads as the President and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc. (MEPPI) based just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. To our readers, his company may be best known as the maker and distributor of DiamondVision, the scoreboard brand that is included in the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas and in numerous other stadiums across the country.

The most amazing thing about Jack Greaf, however, is that he has essentially worked for only two companies in his 40 year career – Westinghouse for the first 20 years and a joint venture between Westinghouse and Mitsubishi Electric which got absorbed into Mitsubishi Electric in the late 80s.

College and Early Career A modest upbringing in western Pennsylvania where he played sports and had a great family support system led Greaf to Youngstown State University (YSU) in 1962. As an undergraduate at YSU, Greaf joined Delta Sigma Phi while working toward obtaining a bachelor’s degree in 1967 in Electrical Engineering.

His experience was a positive one, meeting many brothers with whom he remains in contact today. One of the highlights of his time in the Delta Sigma Chapter was playing intramural basketball with the chapter’s team. “We had a lot of really good athletes in the Fraternity, some of whom even had engineering backgrounds,” he said laughing.

Upon graduating in 1967, he started his career in sales engineering at the Sharon, Pennsylvania Transformer Division of Westinghouse Electric. “Trying out sales engineering may have been one of the best moves I ever made. It

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was a perfect application, and still allowed me to utilize my engineering background,” he said. He spent nine years at the Sharon Transformer Division in sales engineering before moving on.

During those nine years, he decided to also go back to school to earn his master’s in Electrical Engineering at the University of Akron with a number of others in his company. After another few years working after obtaining his master’s degree, Greaf once again was interested in getting more education in the management and sales side of business, so he convinced a few others at Westinghouse to attend the MBA program at his undergraduate alma mater, Youngstown State.

After finishing his MBA, he moved on within Westinghouse to Pittsburgh and a position in international business. That position allowed him to achieve one of his childhood dreams of seeing the world. During his time in that position, he traveled to 30 countries over a period of 4-5 years, experiencing many different cultures along the way.

During this time however, Westinghouse began experiencing some difficulties in some of the markets the company was in. In deciding to exit some of the markets, one of the businesses that Greaf was involved with had its factory closed, opening the door for Mitsubishi Electric to continue to supply the product in the marketplace. Thus began his association with Mitsubishi, which has lasted to this day.

“You could almost say that I have only really worked for one company, because one transitioned into the other one through the joint venture,” Greaf said. “I have enjoyed the relationship with Mitsubishi Electric, and the people have been great to work with. I have had a lot of opportunities that I likely wouldn’t have had any other way.”

The joint venture company between Westinghouse Electric and Mitsubishi Electric started in 1986 and was called WM Power products. After being acquired by Mitsubishi Electric in 1989, the name was changed to Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc. (MEPPI). The company started with 10 employees in 1986 and has about 600 today.

Mitsubishi and MEPPI – The Relationship What most people think about when they hear Mitsubishi is that it’s one big company. However, there are actually 30-40 different companies that all start with the first word ‘Mitsubishi’ that have different stock and different Boards of Directors. Mitsubishi Electric is a completely different company than Mitsubishi Motors for example.

Greaf’s company, MEPPI, is under the umbrella of Mitsubishi Electric, a $35 billion company headquartered in Japan with approximately 100,000 employees worldwide.

The company is in a number of different product lines – from appliances for the kitchen, to heavy electrical equipment, to electronics that go into missiles and other projectiles.

“It’s a very diverse company that actually has nine business groups,” Greaf said. “Our company is aligned with two of those business groups in Japan – both of which have heavy electrical equipment backgrounds. By that I mean our company is building electrical products like generators and transformers for utilities, as well as equipment associated with the railroad industry. We also are involved with creating and distributing DiamondVision scoreboards. These are the main businesses we’re involved with here in Pittsburgh.”

MEPPI took the business over from where it was originally located in Atlanta, bringing it to Pittsburgh. Today, they are building portions of the screens in their Pittsburgh plant and then shipping them to the stadiums where they will be put into place.

“We have put a lot of these screens in. Every major baseball and football stadium, basketball and hockey arena has a video screen made by somebody. We have quite a few of the stadiums since Mitsubishi Electric has been a player in this market since 1980,” Greaf said. “Today, many of the college football stadiums and arenas also have these screens that we are providing.”

Some of the stadiums with DiamondVision scoreboards include the Dallas Cowboys Stadium (which is also the largest one they have supplied), Yankee Stadium, Turner Field in Atlanta (which was one of the first done by MEPPI after they took it over in 2002), US Cellular Field in Chicago, Nationals Park in Washington, Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, TD Bank Garden in Boston, Mile High Stadium in Denver, and many more. The company is also taking care of its home team by installing the new screen and surrounding ribbon screens at the new Pittsburgh Penguins hockey arena set to open for the 2010-11 season.

In addition, all of the screens at PGA Tour events are Mitsubishi DiamondVision, as are many of the screens in New York City’s Times Square. Greaf jokingly said, “New York’s Times Square now has a lot of screens set up, but the best ones in there, I can assure you, are ours. We’ve done quite a number of them in there.” He proudly says that the screens at his alma mater’s Stambaugh Stadium are also DiamondVision screens.

DiamondVision and It’s Impact The only part of MEPPI’s business that really isn’t related to infrastructure is likely its most well known business, the DiamondVision scoreboards. It started in 1980 with its first screen at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and is a company that MEPPI took over actually from another business group within Mitsubishi Electric in 2002 with the help of Greaf.

Greaf and his wife, Jerilyn, visiting Dallas Cowboys Stadium.

Behind them is the largest DiamondVision screen his company has developed to date.

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The Dallas Cowboys stadium LED lights are set up 20 millimeters apart, while the LEDs at the Penguins’ new arena are only six millimeters apart. As Greaf says however, “The application is different in terms of the size of the stadium.”

When you have a large stadium like Cowboys Stadium, they can be further apart and still seem crystal clear, while when you’re in a smaller arena, they need to be closer together.

All in all, DiamondVision is his company’s most visible product, and the one that the majority of Delta Sigs can relate most easily to.

Greaf’s Role as CEO and Leader in Chief Greaf took over from a CEO who led the business during the very difficult startup years and had created the business environment that helped it to grow to where it is today. Greaf’s role was essentially to continue that growth that was started in the early years by his predecessor.

In a fortunate situation for him, the market had improved by the time he took over as President in 2000, and Mitsubishi Electric in Japan continued to add more businesses to MEPPI’s portfolio as it showed it could effectively handle what was on its plate with Greaf at the helm. He was able to help the company grow in terms of the company’s current products, as well as the products that were brought in under the company’s additions.

As for his management philosophy, Greaf says that he is not a micromanager, though jokingly he says his wife seems to think he is… “In a big business, you can’t micromanage.

I like to know what’s going on, and I don’t like surprises. I like to give everybody enough leash so they can go out and do their own thing,” he said. “When they need some help, they can come to me and not worry that I’ll be upset. That’s because I don’t get upset. I look at where we are today, and what is it we need to do to resolve the issue and move forward on a positive measure.”

Greaf is big on leading by example. He sets the example of what he wants his employees to do both in actions, culture, the way they work with customers, and he champions everyone to follow along those lines. He loves working with customers, creating ways in which they can effectively enhance the relationship between the company and the customers, an important aspect of any company leader.

Economic Downturn and The Company’s Future Greaf said that his company has been minimally affected by the economic downturn with a small drop in volume.

However, due to the great products they provide, and the fact that they primarily are creating products that aid in the

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infrastructure of the areas in which the company operates, they have not been affected as substantially as other companies.

In addition, with the potential for a change in the way the country consumes energy, Greaf feels strongly that the company will be in a good position should that happen.

“For the utility businesses that we’re in, I think there will be some changes going forward, but positive ones,” he said.

“This country has a lot of old infrastructure in its utility equipment like transformers and circuit breakers that are 40-50 years old that need to be replaced.”

Greaf also said that it’s going to take a long time to get enough wind or solar generation to replace these huge coal factories that are currently in place, but that there will be a steady move to renewable energy resources. When that happens, there will be even more of a need for new equipment that will help to ease that transition – something that MEPPI will be able to provide.

In Closing Even as he looks to the future, he still takes time to have fun in the moment. He enjoys golfing, traveling to his lake house at Conneaut Lake in Pennsylvania, traveling for pleasure, and spending time with his friends and family, including his wife, Jerilyn, who he met while growing up. They have been married for 42 years.

And much like many Delta Sig CEOs, he says that working hard is the key to his success.

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS TO BECOME A

MASTER NEGOTIATOR

By Jeffrey Gordon, Valparaiso ’91

Negotiation is a staple of (fraternity) life. From internal governance to simple roommate interactions, you negotiate hundreds of times every day. Like our fraternity secrets, successful negotiation skills are only secrets to the uninitiated. Luckily, there are only five fundamental skills to effective negotiation.

1. Information Gathering Information Gathering is first. Start by understanding why you’re coming to the negotiation table. You want something… but what, exactly? Play 20 questions with yourself to determine the boundaries of your desire. This determines your “must haves” versus your “like to haves.” Next, repeat the exercise again as your opponent.

You can see this process at work when buying a car. One of the first things that the salesperson asks a customer walking onto the lot is “What kind of vehicle are you looking for today?” and “How much are you looking to spend?” They’re not trying to ask to help the buyer make up their mind – they’re trying to discover the boundaries for the negotiation.

Failure to complete the Information Gathering process affords your opponent the ability to sway your decision by selling you on their position before you’ve formulated your own. They may also convince you that something has inflated value, which increases the perception of its importance or your desire to obtain it.

For example, if you haven’t researched my widget – which has an incredibly cool, expensive-looking case (yet cheap for me to include), you may want the case and feel like you “won” if I include the case but don’t decrease the price. But for me, it was an easy concession. I included something cheap from my perspective and you felt like you got something huge. Think about this the next time you go cell phone shopping and the salesperson gives you a case and carcharger “for free” but doesn’t discount the cost of the phone.

2. Strategic Thinking After Information Gathering, the next step is using the information that you’ve compiled through Strategic

Thinking. Chess is a common analogy for this skill. A playing field delineates the boundaries of the engagement. Pieces each play a particular role and represent different values.

Players take turns moving, analogous to the nature of concessions in a traditional view of negotiation.

The problem with this analogy is that chess has fixed rules. A rook can ONLY move laterally and a bishop can ONLY move diagonally. Granted, this could be a metaphor for how you have various negotiation constraints put upon you. In actuality, however, you ALWAYS have two extra options available to you: creating a new move, or the ability to walk away without finishing. These options are important and illustrate why strategic thinking is so valuable. If you have not considered what impact your behavior will have on the other side, you probably have not actually completed Information Gathering. Thus, you aren’t prepared to fully understand what is on the table and how you both might be able to meet your needs.

Strategic Thinking is also an active skill – one that must be employed while in the heat of the negotiation, (a.k.a. thinking on your feet). When faced with a negotiation, allow time to ponder your moves. This starts with your goal, moves to your motives and ends with your behavior. You can come out of the gate with guns blazing – looking for everything you want and seeking only your own objectives. On the flip side, you can come out conceding every point, seeking to cooperate. Each option sets a very different tone to the negotiation.

Guns blazing set the stage for an aggressive negotiation and you will be fighting for things along the way. Too conciliatory, on the other hand, and you’ll give up everything.

Even experts advise differently. One camp says play stupid

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Now you have the Five

and see what you can get through self-depreciating behavior.

Another says that you should always start with no as a way to encourage discussion. The net result of Strategic Thinking is an ability to not only see what your path could be, but to also see where your opponent is going to move. For if you play a win-win strategy against someone with a win-lose strategy, who do you think is going to lose?

Fundamental Skills for Effective 3. Time Management

Negotiation: Information Gathering, Strategic Thinking, Time Management, Power and Communication. If you can master all five, you can learn any negotiation tip, trick or hint and apply it to your situation. But remember these five – for without them, all the tactics in the world won’t help you be successful.

If you don’t master even one of these skills, you will find yourself outmatched when working with

The third skill, Time Management, requires appreciating this key constraint and the ability to plan for its effects. Luckily, at a base level, it affects us all equally – one second for you is the same for me. Thus the important factor in Time Management is knowing the specific times that create constraints for each party to the negotiation, some of which were discovered by using the Information Gathering skill.

Learn to separate the urgent things (those which appear to need speed) from the important things (those which are actually vital). I can’t tell you how to segment them in your own brain – but it starts with asking what will happen if something does not get done by its deadline.

Your opponent also has time constraints – deadlines by which they must abide. They too, have urgent and important things to consider. Remember, though, that your specific constraints won’t always mesh with your opponent’s constraints, nor will the list of urgent versus important items.

Figuring out what’s really important to both sides can thus play into a timely closing, for if you know when both parties really need the negotiation to close, you can work together to accomplish the goal.

A pressure point increasing the non-constrained party’s leverage occurs when one party appears oblivious to the effects of time. But unless you discover this issue, chances are that you will continue to believe that you’re both operating on the same timetable – yours. On the flip side, what if you’re the constrained party and you are rightfully concerned about leverage? You can either get rid of the constraint or you can address it head-on and make it a non-issue by telling the other side that it is a constraint. But that failure to create a solution by the deadline will affect both parties (i.e. if we miss the deadline, the price goes up).

someone who has these skills 4. Perception of Power down pat.

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The fourth skill is the Perception of Power, which is an ability to recognize the power equation and learn how to balance it. This isn’t as tricky as it might first appear and can really be summed up in one single thought: Everyone who sits down at the negotiation table has power.

It’s that easy. If they’re talking with you at all, you have power. Wal-Mart, even as large as they are, wants more

customers – and yes, contrary to popular belief, they want happy customers. So, if you have the potential to be a good reference (a happy, visible customer), they’ll negotiate.

Never forget or abuse that power. Merely balance the equation so that you’re not at a disadvantage. Monitor the balance the same way you move when balancing a chair on two legs – large movement is disastrous. The same is true for balancing power. Keep power corrections small, light and balanced.

You will discover that people have a tendency to want to protect their position even within the negotiation itself.

As the negotiator in many of these situations, my clients tend to believe it’s my responsibility to take command. But honestly, I’m no more in command of the negotiation than a bat is during a baseball game. I’m an instrument of the individual/organization in charge. I don’t make the decisions, but rather I help the client determine how to use me best… and then respond to their swing.

Power seems to manifest itself in a variety of strange ways.

Most frustrating is the individual who wants to make sure they’re always the center of attention (which isn’t power).

There’s also the person who tries to be a bully. And most interesting are the folks seemingly oblivious to where power really sits – as it so often occurs in international relationships.

The key is just to remember that power surrounds and is infused in all negotiation. Knowing who has it, how much, and in what ways they use it will allow you to respond accordingly – or not at all.

5. Communication Like the others, the fifth fundamental skill is a no-brainer: Communication. You MUST be able to effectively communicate with both your team and your opponent. Communication consists of three separate actions: message formulation (creating what you want to communicate in your head using all of the prior four fundamental skills working together to help you develop your idea of what you want to say/do); message transmission (converting that into words or actions); and, message reception (the recipient’s decoding of the message and understanding what you were trying to communicate).

Pay attention to things that can get in the way of successful transmission. Language barriers, missed e-mails, or even misunderstanding of humor/sarcasm/etc. via e-mail are examples.

Time and Power are also components of transmission – for example, when you delay providing information to your opponent, their receptiveness changes.

Even with the best of intentions, a message can also get garbled anywhere in the continuum between idea and reception. Look for clues that your message isn’t being received as

you intended. For example silence can be one indicator of failed reception. Ask the person you’re communicating with to communicate their understanding BACK to you or ask them questions to determine whether they understand what you’re trying to say.

To improve your communication ability, simply talk more with your friends, family and co-workers. Alternatively, watch how people already around you respond to your communication behavior. Do they constantly ask you to restate what you’re trying to say, or do they seem to get it almost immediately?

Now you have the Five Fundamental Skills for Effective Negotiation: Information Gathering, Strategic Thinking, Time Management, Power and Communication. If you can master all five, you can learn any negotiation tip, trick or hint and apply it to your situation. But remember these five – for without them, all the tactics in the world won’t help you be successful. If you don’t master even one of these skills, you will find yourself outmatched when working with someone who has these skills down pat.

For more information on these skills, including specific exercises and teaching tips on improving your skill in these areas, you can purchase the Five Fundamental Skills for Effective Negotiation workbook in either a hardcopy or downloadable format. Included are longer descriptions of the skills themselves, added training ideas, as well as a negotiation exercise designed to help use all Five Fundamental Skills in practice.

Jeff Gordon, Valparaiso ’91, is Vice President of Value Creation at NET(net), the industry leader in IT investment optimization. He has authored two books – The Software Licensing Handbook and The Five Fundamental Skills for Effective Negotiation. He can be reached for further information at jgordon@netnetweb.com.

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FINDING YOUR

CAREER PATH THROUGH THOUGHTFUL PREPARATION (and the Help of the Bureau of Labor Statistics)

By Bill Lawhorn, UW LaCrosse ’93, Economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Times are tough for job seekers these days. Not only are new graduates struggling to find work, but in some cases men and women with over 20 years’ experience are as well. Whether you are an undergraduate or alumnus, knowing where to find out about careers is important. My hope is that through this story about some of the resources available through my employer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you’ll be better prepared to find that next job (or at least understand where to look).

In high school, you may have discussed future plans with your parents, friends, teachers, and guidance counselors. The first career you considered might have been those of your parents or high profile occupations depicted on TV or in movies. There are many occupations out there of which you may be unaware, and there are many sources to find out about them.

However, there is one resource that can play a significant role in your preparation, The Occupational Outlook Handbook. (www.bls.gov/ooh) The Handbook has information related to hundreds of occupations, and includes a brief description of the duties, working conditions, education and training, employment outlook, earnings, and sources of additional information. The information provided gives you the basics, and while it isn’t exhaustive, it should give you an idea of what to expect in that occupation.

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History of The Handbook To give you a bit of history of The Handbook, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is best known for publishing the national employment level and unemployment rate, but it was tasked with providing occupational information after WWII. The first The Handbook precursor was a Veterans Administration shoestring bound collection of job descriptions in 1946 created to help GIs transition from the Military to the civilian workforce. In 1948, the first regular bound The Handbook was published with information about occupations. The two year cycle has been stable since the 1950s. In the 1990s, The Handbook’s content was published online for the first time. An essential part of The Handbook is information related to the outlook for occupations, which currently are published for the 2008-18 period. The 2010-20 projections are scheduled to be published in November 2011.

Some of the Outcomes of The Handbook There are three different measures of growth and opportunities developed during the creation of the The Handbook. There are projections for fastest growing jobs, largest numeric growth jobs, and replacement needs.

The fastest growing jobs are those that have a large percent change.

Biomedical engineers are projected to

grow 72% between 2008-18. That 72% growth translates to 11,600 new jobs.

On the other hand, registered nurses are projected to grow 22%, a much smaller percentage of growth compared to biomedical engineers. However, RNs’ 22% growth translates to 581,500 new jobs because it is a larger occupation. Replacement needs project the overall job demand in an occupation based on replacing workers that permanently leave that occupation.

Replacements do not include someone who just switches positions and not occupation. In addition to the 581,500 new nursing jobs, there will be a need to replace 457,500 nurses that leave the occupation.

In the 2008-18 projections, the occupations with the largest growth are registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives, and food service workers. With the exception of RNs, these jobs do not require a degree. The largest growing occupations usually requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher are accountants and auditors, post-secondary teachers, elementary school teachers, management analysts, and computer software engineers.

The Big Question – How Easy is it to Find a Job? Even with a large growth and replacement needs there is still a question that many people are currently asking – how easy is it to find employment?

There is a section of The Handbook that specifically addresses this job outlook question. For example, many brothers are considering a career in the legal field. Here is a cautionary note from The Handbook: “Competition for job openings should continue to be keen because of the large number of students graduating from law school each year. Graduates with superior academic records from highly regarded law schools will have the best job opportunities.

Perhaps as a result of competition for attorney positions, lawyers are increasingly finding work in less traditional areas for which legal training is an asset, but not normally a requirement—for example, administrative, managerial, and business positions in banks, insurance firms, real estate companies, government agencies, and other organizations.”

This note explains that just getting a degree won’t guarantee a job, something that is often forgotten. There are a number of useful tips in the special features section of The Handbook that will help make you a better candidate. Tips on interviews, applying for jobs, and evaluating job offers are just a few examples.

In addition to The Handbook, there are additional sources of occupational information from the Department of Labor: • The Occupational Outlook Quarterly has a large amount of career and occupational information available, and it is free online. The OOQ, which is published four times a year, includes articles related to interviewing techniques, what to do with a Liberal Arts Degree, and the value of extra curricular activities. (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/ ooqhome.htm) • The U.S. Department of Labor’s CareerOneStop web site, located at www.CareerOneStop.org, can help you with the following tasks: • Find an employment specialist near you. You can go to www.ServiceLocator.org and enter your zip code to find a local Career

One-Stop Center, where specialists can help you with a job search, resume and cover letter writing, career exploration, education and training options, filing for unemployment insurance, and more.

• Search for jobs. Go to www.jobbankinfo.org to be connected to your state’s job bank, which provides a list of help-wanted postings in your state. This site also has links to the Federal job bank web site, www.usajobs.opm.gov, and private job banks and portals, where you can search for available positions throughout the country.

• Learn more about careers. Go to www.CareerInfoNet.org for videos, reports, and other information about occupations and industries, tools to help you explore careers, labor market data, and more.

• Get help using CareerOneStop resources. Call toll free, 1-877348-0502 (TTY: 1-877-348-0501); or e-mail your questions to info@careeronestop.org.

While there is no simple solution to finding a career or being successful, there are some things you can do to prepare, like starting with realistic goals, working hard toward those goals, and adding significant amounts of continuing education and training. All of

these are looked at favorably by hiring officials according to The Handbook.

So, take time to prepare, check out the BLS’ Occupational Outlook Handbook and the other resources in this story for the latest statistics and assistance, and you’ll hopefully be on your way to a rewarding and successful career in your chosen profession.

From the Author When I left the University of Wisconsin La Crosse in 1995, I didn’t expect to be living and working in the DC metro area.

I graduated with a degree and teaching license in Social Studies, and figured that would be my future. A struggle finding a job as a Social Studies teacher sent me to the internet. I knew I wanted security and that was about all I knew. I started by looking for teaching jobs, again without much luck. I then tried looking for other jobs, and realized that the economics coursework would be of help. I filled out an online application to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Later I was scheduled to interview by phone, and the next thing I know, I was planning to move for my new job. It was a long, but rewarding process.

If you have questions related to BLS data and publications, feel free to contact me (lawhorn.william@bls.gov).

BLS factoid Every month, the jobs report includes an unemployment rate and a count of how many jobs were added or lost during the prior month. In some months the unemployment rate goes up even as the number of jobs created grew.

Why? This is caused by an increase in the size of the labor force as people who were discouraged re-enter by looking for work. For example, in April 2010 the payroll employment increased by 290,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate increased to 9.9% as 805,000 people reentered the labor force.

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Health & Fitness

BROTHE THE TRUE MEANING OF

Life is about more than what was.

For Alex Watters, Morningside ’05, life before joining Delta Sigma Phi included playing golf on a college scholarship, and his dreams to one day become a teaching golf professional.

All that changed however on September 11, 2004, when he was involved in an incident that left him paralyzed from the chest down and in a wheelchair.

Watters was two weeks into his freshman year at Morningside College when he and a friend went with some girls they had met on campus to a family cabin near his hometown of Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa for a family get together. His friend had left for a bit and Watters was getting ready to go swimming around Midnight with one of the girls’ young brothers. His baseball cap blew off his head and into the lake while he stood on a dock around 150 feet out.

Instead of waiting, Watters dove headfirst into the water to retrieve his hat. Unfortunately for him, the water was only 18 inches deep, and he suffered a broken C-5 vertebra, immediately paralyzing him. As he was in the water, he recalls trying to swim but being unable to.

“I remember hearing the break, and not knowing why I wasn’t swimming,” he said. “I was thinking that I’d better start swimming soon. After I realized I wasn’t moving, I felt calm and thought to myself that if this was it, this was it.

That is when I blacked out.”

Amazingly, the two girls with whom he was at the lake were both lifeguards, and immediately ran to his aid, giving him life breaths and flipping him over until the ambulance arrived.

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ERHOOD The Story of Alex Watters, Morningside ’05

Watters’ father is a police officer in the area, and Alex knew all of the first responders and paramedics. “One of the first responders’ wife actually babysat me when I was younger,” he said. “I remember seeing him and thinking to myself ‘Wow, I really screwed up.’”

Watters was taken to the local hospital at Lake Okoboji, where he was met by the first responder’s wife – his former babysitter. She consoled him as they were boarding him onto the Life Flight helicopter, letting him know that everything was going to be ok while trying not to seem too hysterical.

Life Flight took Watters to Sioux City, Iowa (where Morningside College is located), where a surgeon was there waiting. After arriving between 2 and 3 am, a short meeting took place between the doctor, Watters, his parents and his pastor before surgery took place. After spending two additional weeks after surgery in the Sioux City Hospital, where he was visited often by a great deal of people including the whole Gamma Psi Chapter, Watters was moved to Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, where he would spend another six months.

“Craig was filled with people like me, guys my age with spinal cord injuries like mine and traumatic brain injuries.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of 18 year olds who are being reckless and breaking their necks,” he said jokingly.

He was actually only supposed to stay at Craig for three months, but he had developed a pressure sore, which caused him to have to endure two additional surgeries and stay in the hospital for another three months. Much of the last three months he spent there was on his back. His parents took turns coming out and staying with him, and he had a great deal of others come out, including a number of men from the chapter to provide their support.

“A couple of girls, who were friends with the guys in the chapter, brought me a big framed poster of a Superman symbol that all the guys had signed. I still have that hanging in my room to this day,” he said.

One other thing that happened while he was nearing the end of his stay at Craig Hospital was that he met a woman – one of his physical therapy assistants named Heather – who he actually began dating and who moved back to Iowa with him to help him throughout his four years of college. “We ended up dating for three and a half years, and she assisted me throughout college and was a big part of my success,” he said.

After leaving Craig, Watters returned to his parents’ house in April 2005 and enrolled in a community college to get back into the swing of college life. After that went well, he re-enrolled at Morningside in September 2005 and began the process of continuing his life, knowing he would spend the rest of it in a wheelchair.

How Brotherhood Has Helped Him Upon returning to Morningside, Watters, who had previously lived down the hall from the chapter but had yet to join, began the pledge process and became a brother during Fall 2005. In addition to the chapter, he was also heavily involved in a number of other student organizations. He served in an executive board position as the student advocate for the student government, and was involved with the College Democrats and the Political Science & History Department’s Club.

Upon initiating into the Fraternity, he realized it was where he really wanted to focus his time. He became the Vice President of the chapter, serving in that role for his last two years alongside his best friend, fellow pledge brother, and current roommate, Ryan Lickteig, Morningside ‘05.

“My pledge class was one of the largest in recent memory in our chapter, initiating 13 new members,” he said. “We had a close-knit group, and wanted to find ways in which we could better the Fraternity.”

He was focused on the chapter, but was also an excellent student. In fact, he graduated with a 3.9 GPA, earning his only B in a Spanish class that was meant to help him achieve all of

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Health & Fitness Today, Watters is still helped in and out of bed every night by Lickteig, his roommate and chapter brother. “Without all of the relationships I made in the Fraternity, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

his elective courses. He credits Heather and the chapter with helping him make it through college.

“Heather assisted me in getting back to living, pushing me toward certain goals, and taking notes for me during every class. With me being a political science and global history major, I don’t think she enjoyed all of the classes, but she found them interesting,” he said.

His chapter brothers helped in a number of ways as well. In fact, Watters credits the chapter for helping him get through his four years as easily as he was able to. “It was a group of guys that I knew I fit in with and that didn’t judge me,” he said.

The brothers helped him in a number of very specific ways, including by getting him out of his room and getting him to have fun, something that many people who are paralyzed don’t always do. “Sometimes, people in my situation get stuck at home and stuck inside their own heads not feeling like they’re accepted by society,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be active, and the guys assisted with that by getting me out and having fun all the time.”

In addition, one of the chapter brothers moved into the dorm room next to Watters so he could get him in and out of bed every day. “They really stepped up in a lot of ways that I don’t think a lot of college students expect to do when heading off to school.”

Today, Watters is still helped in and out of bed every night

by Lickteig, his roommate and chapter brother. “Without all of the relationships I made in the Fraternity, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

His Future Plans, Perspective and Goals Where he is right now is Omaha, Nebraska, enrolled at Creighton University working toward his master’s degree in Conflict and Dispute Resolution that he will attain in Spring 2011.

“One thing I learned after breaking my neck is how interconnected we are and how much we need to rely on other

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people,” he said. “So, I wanted to find a career upon graduation that would allow me give back and help people like everyone who helped me did.”

He relates his feeling toward his future to the movie Pay it Forward, in that he knows how blessed he is to have the people who have helped him without even thinking twice about it. He wants to ensure that he’s appreciative about those relationships, but also help those who he can through his future work.

He has a number of ways in which he will be able to help others not only through their struggles, but also in their understanding of him. He uses opportunities like this story to educate people on paralysis, with his unique vantage point as someone who wasn’t in a wheelchair and now is.

“I know before I was hurt, I would be apprehensive about going up to talk to someone in a wheelchair, because deep down, I think we all assume that it’s something mental,” he said. “I like educating people that it’s not mental at all. I just can’t walk and can’t use my hands. You can’t judge every book by its cover.”

There are a few additional opportunities that have come his way to allow him to continue this education. He has been asked to speak as Morningside College’s freshman feature speaker for the 2010-11 academic year. Past speakers have included Thomas Friedman and other nationally known authors and celebrities.

He’s also thought about a national speaking tour to talk to freshman in college and seniors in high school focusing on adapting to what life throws at you, and how you always need to be willing to adapt.

A former professor offered to serve as the ghost writer for a book that he could then go on tour for as well. “As long as my story can resonate with some people and people find it interesting, I don’t care if I only sell 10 copies, my goal is to change the world and help people.”

If he decides to stay with what his master’s degree is preparing him to do, Watters also has a desired job there as well.

He’d like to work in a juvenile offender mediation program, where he can utilize his master’s degree to help troubled youth come together with the person they offended against so long as it’s non-violent. A worthy job to again aid in his goal to change the world in some small way.

Although he has physical limitations that he says he is sometimes frustrated about, and his future plans are different than what he thought he was going to be doing, he’s looking forward to what is coming his way moving forward.

“There are things that I did in my past that I’d love to do again, but that’s all in the past,” he said. “There are things to look forward to in the future, and you can always do something if you put your mind to it.”

Alex Watters is living proof that’s true.

FROM A

SMALL TOWN TO THE

WHITE HOUSE: THE STORY OF BOB BANNING, MISSOURI ’57

Retired US Army Colonel Bob Banning, Missouri ’57, grew up a big fan of former president Harry Truman. In fact, he got to know the family while growing up just down the street in Independence, Missouri. He even went to the same elementary school and had the same third grade teacher as their daughter, Margaret (albeit a few years later). Little did he know that he would see Margaret again many years later in Washington, DC while he was serving as a White House Social Aide during her father’s funeral.

“I had said when I started as a social aide that if there was ever a time when President Truman dies and something would take place in Washington, I would like to be a part of it. It turned out that he did die in 1972, and Margaret and her husband attended the memorial service at the National Cathedral. They were provided the Blair House, the presidential guest house, and I served as the President’s Aide to Margaret Truman for that event. We talked about old friends and discussed a great deal about Independence.

“After that experience, I received a letter from her husband who was the Editor of the New York Times on the thickest paper I had ever seen thanking me for all I had done.”

That story is just the tip of the iceberg from Banning, who served as one of 30 White House Social Aides from 1972-1974 in the Nixon White House, a service that was in addition to his job in the US Army. Before being picked to serve as a social aide, Banning had served for 14 years in the Army, serving in both Korea and Vietnam during that tenure.

In the coming pages, you’ll read more of Banning’s recollections of his time both in the military and in the White House, and see some photos of his mementos.

Banning at the White House State Dinner for the President of Mexico in 1973.

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Government & Politics About His Pre White House Military Experience Upon his graduation from the University of Missouri in 1958, Banning was scheduled to go into the Army in September. During that summer between graduation and reporting, Banning, his mother and father took a long driving vacation to the foothills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, that was the last time he was able to spend with his father, who passed away soon thereafter at age 49.

He did go off to the Army in September 1958 and was assigned to Fort Sill in Oklahoma in field artillery. From there, he made a number of stops, including 13 months in Korea and 12 months in Vietnam where he was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action, the national’s third highest medal for valor. He eventually earned the rank of Colonel.

An interesting story about Banning’s travels is that when he was assigned to Germany, he had to ride a naval ship out of Brooklyn to get there. “I sailed out of Brooklyn terminal and spent 11 days on the ocean going to Bremerhaven,” he said. “And it was boring! I don’t have a love of going on cruises these days.”

About the Interview Process To become a social aide, Banning was made to go through a large number of interviews within his own branch of the military before event being able to interview at the White House.

“You’re interviewed by the permanent military aide at the White House, and if they all pass you, you’re interviewed by the social secretary,” Banning said. “Lucy Winchester was the social secretary at the time, and I was able to make it through the interview with her to be chosen as a social aide.”

Lady. “They can’t meet everyone at the front door and say welcome, so they had us meet and welcome everyone before organizing them in whatever protocol order they needed to be in. I set up receiving lines, introduced people to the president, and that sort of thing.

“For the first six months, I was concerned that I would do something bad. The second six months, I kinda got the hang of it, and the second full year I just had a ball. I had a wonderful time doing this.”

Meeting Celebrities and Other Interesting Experiences Throughout his time serving as a Social Aide, Banning met many interesting people, including world leaders, industry leaders and other major players in government. These are all in addition to his work with the President and First Lady.

“I got to meet most of the world’s leaders and work with some of the leaders in industry and government. Henry Ford and the Shah of Iran and his wife are a few examples,” he said. “President Nixon was big on State Dinners, so we had at least one per month where people would come to the White House.”

Interestingly, his time in the White House was during an election period, so he had some other amazing experiences as well.

“In 1972 Nixon was elected in a landslide. We went through the inauguration, to an inaugural ball, and sat in the Presidential booth and watched the parade go by.

There were some amazing experiences, and were things that I would have never dreamed that people could actually do in life.”

About His Favorite Experience His Responsibilities as a White House Army Social Aide There were about 30 Social Aides total from each of the branches of the service, and the social aide position is essentially an additional duty to their daily duties where they are permanently assigned – in Banning’s case the field artillery branch.

“My boss had to say it was ok if I went on a moment’s notice, at any time, to the White House if it was required,” Banning said. “I was probably at the White House five to six times per week for anything from a State Dinner, to the arrival ceremony for a visiting head of State, to a church service or reception for a group like the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

According to Banning, White House social aides essentially serve as an assistant host to the President and First

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As a military man, Banning’s fondest experience was serving as the aide-in-charge of a dinner that was held for returning Vietnam POWs in 1973. He recalled the amazing generosity of President Nixon at that event, and how the POWs were treated like royalty at the White House.

“Generally when the White House is open to the public for an event of some sort, only the state floor is open. The family quarters are on the second and third level, and people just don’t go up there. This night, all the POWs, their guests, and a number of other invited guests were at the White House for a reception, dinner and entertainment. The entire White House, including the family quarters, was open for these POWs. “The President was so excited. He was a very reserved person, but this night, he was so excited to talk to people.

He was everywhere. He’d pop out of one door to talk to

Cufflinks and tie bar presented to Banning by President Nixon on Banning’s departure as an Aide.

people, and then would go upstairs to talk to others. People were able to go into the Lincoln Bedroom and all of the other places that you never get to see.”

Included in that list of returning POWs was current Arizona Senator, John McCain and his wife at the time.

That night Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, and anybody who was anybody was there performing. As aide-incharge, Banning was able to escort the final performer to the stage, Irving Berlin.

“He was probably then in his mid-80s, and he led everyone in singing God Bless America. There was not a dry eye in the house. It was such an emotional evening, and it was just absolutely great.”

What Nixon was Like from Banning’s Perspective Obviously, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency amidst the Watergate scandal, and left office in disgrace. And according to Banning, Nixon was a solitary man, was very serious, and was all business (aside from that time at the POW Return). “He was not jovial generally, but wasn’t grumpy either,” Banning said. “At the POW returnee dinner, he showed an entirely different face. He showed a human

A portrait of the first family presented to Banning by the Nixons on his departure as an Aide.

face, he was smiling, gregarious and generally welcoming.”

After his years as a social aide, Banning went to the Army War College, and became the Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Army for Panama Canal Affairs until 1985. His final position before retiring in 1988 with the rank of Colonel was serving as the Military Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense in Washington.

Banning had a lifetime of experiences that many of us can only dream about in just his few short years as a White House Social Aide. He met interesting people, served his country and the President diligently, and utilized his leadership skills to enhance experiences of a wide variety of people. His efforts would certainly have made his father proud, much like they did for his many brothers across the country.

Bob Banning currently resides in Tucson, Arizona where he has for the last 22 years. He has four Thunderbird cars that he loves, and especially enjoys the hot weather.

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Leadership & Education

The Seven Traits Found in

VICTORIOUS TEAMS!

By James R. (Jim) Lucas, Missouri S&T ’69

The goal for every leader is to have a team that is victorious – not just effective, which is good; not just efficient, which is good – but having a team that actually meets and exceeds its own goals and expectations. We, as a team, want victory. As team leaders, we want victory. We want to win – win in a good sense, not win at the expense of anyone else, but win because we’re doing the right things and we’re building a passion into our team that makes a huge difference.

Over decades of working with all kinds of teams, we at Luman have seen that if you get these seven traits rooted deeply into your leadership style, you’re going to see a lot of the frustration evaporate, and you’re going to see some real excitement.

You’re even going to feel better about getting up in the morning and coming in and facing your team and working with your team.

The first trait of a victorious team is Vision. Now, what do we mean by vision? It means we know where the team is headed and where it should be going. A lot of team members are not really sure what the priorities are. We may know our job is to market products, serve customers, design, innovate, and improve

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processes, but where is the team going? What is our big purpose and what does this mean in what I do every day? How is the team going to achieve its goals for the next few months and its goals for the year?

Bill Jensen said, “Leaders pretend that the challenges of leadership are rational and tactical rather than emotional and conversational. Most plans are communicated according to marketplace logic.” This is how things work in the real world. He goes on, “But people don’t listen to logic. They listen for meaning and purpose.” And this is what we’ve found with teams around the world: teams and individuals are looking for meaning and purpose. They don’t want to feel like they’re just putting in time.

Your team has to have a sense of what we call VMVB™ – Vision, Mission, Values, and Behaviors.

Vision means we’ve got to know where we’re going. Mission says, we’ve got to know how we’re going to get there. Our Values are the rules of the road. How do we to agree to act and interact with one another in areas like respect and integrity, openness and communication? Behaviors are what’s acceptable on our team, and what’s not. At Luman, we think it’s very important for a team to carefully define what behaviors are going to build a passionate team and what behaviors will undoubtedly tear it down. (We cover how to get your VMVB™ into a “team charter” in The Passion Principle.)

The second trait is Intelligence.

We want to have a smart team. So we must design smart teams and make our smart teams even smarter.

This doesn’t mean everybody on your team has the highest IQ, but that we have people on this team performing in areas in which they are both passionate and competent. They’ve got to have both of those qualities, and as leaders, we have a role in that.

We’ve got to spend time finding and placing the right people into the right roles on the team so they can make the best decisions.

One very important question for team leaders to ask is, “How will we know if we’ve won?” The problem is, a lot of teams don’t even know what victory looks like. Instead we have to set goals together, which requires making choices and tradeoffs. We open up the dialogue by saying, “Ok. We’ve got all these opportunities, but we’ve only got so much in the way of resources. What do we spend them on?” (We talk about the “10 Questions Teams Must Answer” in our course titled Leading Passionate Teams™.)

Trait number three is Cohesion: getting a team to work closely together as a mutually committed team.

Cohesion. Are we bonded together?

Are we “stuck like glue”?

Let’s look at an example from biology – the semi-permeable membrane.

Just like a cell that has a membrane around it, a team needs a semi-permeable barrier. This means that some things, but not everything, can get in and out. A cohesive team has to have something unique that sets it apart. We’ve found that the process of producing a VMVB™ “team charter” creates an identity for your team, generates that cohesion, and develops the membrane.

Remember, the membrane is semi-permeable, so if you need more information or support from outside

‘‘

your team, it’s open. You can bring information in. And if you need to share things with people outside your team, the information can go where it’s needed. It’s very critical to have everyone working together.

The next trait is Tools. As a team, we need skills that allow better teaming. We need processes that make the team stronger rather than processes that destroy it. We find that teams, if left to their own devices, often fall off into mediocrity. They end up gravitating to decisions and actions that represent the least-common-denominator among the team members.

We also have to decide the type of team we need to apply to a specific opportunity. Did you know there are three categories of teams? The wrong kind of team assigned to a certain situation can produce inferior results.

We’ve got to put the right people on the right kind of team. We’ve got to have an effective way to manage consensus so we don’t agree too soon or too late. We’ve got to have effective conflict management so we take advantage of the good conflict that comes from diversity of thought and avoid the bad conflict that comes from people just not wanting to get along.

We need what we call Unavoidable Accountability™. People need to know what the team’s responsibility is and what their responsibility is so they can’t just slough it off and say, “Well, it’s the team that did it.”

Vital Trait number five is Openness: creating an open environment where all ideas and concerns can be safely shared. It’s our responsibility as team leaders to create a safe place for daunting facts to be shared. That’s really what great team leaders do – they make a safe place. Often, bosses and supervisors never hear the bad news until it’s turned from a little spark into a forest fire, and they’re exclaiming, “What are you doing?

Why didn’t you tell me this three

Leaders pretend that the

challenges of leadership are rational and tactical rather

than emotional and conversational. Most plans are

communicated according to marketplace logic.” This is how things work in the

real world... “But people

don’t listen to logic. They listen for meaning and

purpose.” And this is what we’ve found with teams around the world: teams

and individuals are looking for meaning and purpose.

They don’t want to feel like they’re just putting in time.

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Leadership & Education there’s a fifth one to add to that as we talk about building this passionate team. Great teams Reform! We’re going to assess our team. We’re going to ask, are we a good team? Are we a great team? Are we a mediocre team?

Are we even a team at all? We’re going to take the time to find out because once we know where we stand, we can get better. (A good place to start is with Luman’s assessment called The Passion Infrastructure™ found at lumanresearch.com.)

And know this: no team ever maintains its passion without a lot of vigilance and a lot of commitment from the team leaders. If you’re persistent and stay at it, you’re going to see a huge difference in how you relate, how you gather information, the level in which your team applies itself, and the victories you achieve. These seven traits form an acronym. Fold them into your team and be VICTORS!

weeks ago?” Well, duh. It’s because we haven’t created a safe place for dangerous truth. One of the marks of a great leader is that bad news gets to their desk fast.

One thing missing from most teams is honesty. Most teams are not honest with themselves internally, leaving problems there to fester. And they’re not honest externally, where they try to make problems disappear. Bottom line – there are no passionate, victorious teams without an unrelenting commitment to honesty and to hearing the “unvarnished truth.”

Trait six is Results: getting the team to focus on accomplishing important goals. Luman has much more instruction on this in our courses, but here’s the key point: We’re going to make the whole team responsible for the whole team’s results. When this critical concept

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is missed, it results in many business disasters. Think about the Titanic.

All seemed to be going pretty well and “I was doing my job. I was serving an exquisite meal in the dining room and then…the ship went down. ” So, you were doing your job. Well, you know what? If the ship goes down, it doesn’t matter if you were doing your job or not. It only matters if the whole team is successful or not.

So, if you’re on a team, the team’s problem is your problem. And, in fact, if you know about a problem, you own that problem. That problem belongs to you. Don’t be afraid of it. Bring it forward and go from there.

The last of our seven traits is Sustainability: helping the team to maintain its passion and commitment over time. Many of us have heard the expression that great teams Form, Storm, Norm, and Perform. But,

James R. Lucas is a recognized authority on leadership development and culture design™. He is president & CEO of Luman International, a firm that has worked with thousands of leaders to build Passionate, Thinking, Pure-Performance Organizations™. This article is excerpted from his course Leading Passionate Teams™ and summarized in his book The Attraction Principle.

Visit www.lumaninternational.com to learn how his firm can help equip your leaders and teams.

TWO

P ERSPECTIVES OF THE BP OIL DISASTER Although the oil stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico a number of months ago, the BP oil disaster was likely one of the biggest stories of the past year. Because of that, we asked two brothers to give their perspectives of the disaster – one who serves in state government representing one of the affected areas, and the other who is an ecologist who will speak directly to the environmental impact of the oil spill.

The Economic and Emotional Impact of the Disaster Louisiana State Representative Damon Baldone, Nicholls State ’85, and his constituents in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes are getting used to dealing with disasters. Over the last 10 years, the district he lives in and represents, which is in south central Louisiana and includes the town of Houma, has dealt with the devastation of four hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike). Now, it’s reeling from the devastation of the BP oil disaster from this past summer.

But perhaps “reeling” isn’t the correct word since one of the area’s main sources for its economy is fishing – an industry that the oil spill decimated during the mid-late summer…

“My district has the largest amount of commercial fishermen in it, I think throughout the whole Gulf coast,” Baldone said. “Terrebonne Barataria Estuary is the most productive estuary in North America, excluding some in Alaska.”

The other main economic drivers for his area are shrimping, crabbing, oyster fishing and interestingly enough, oil wells and fields. In fact, the two parishes Baldone represents supply 20% of the nation’s oil and gas.

“Actually oil fields are the dominant economic driver in our area, followed by seafood and medical,” he said. “A lot of the Federal government’s response, where President Obama put a moratorium on deep water drilling, which also caused a number of bureaucratic issues with in shore drilling, shut down work here.”

And the fact that oil fields have such an impact made the spill even worse for his area with the response that occurred following it. The fact that the oil industry was essentially shut down during its busiest months of the year was a big hit to the local economy according to Baldone.

Even with all of the devastation that occurred not only with the oil spill, but also the hurricanes over the last 10 years, one thing he says that hasn’t wavered is his residents’ resiliency.

“We have some very resilient people, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “I’ve had houses in my district that in the last seven years, have flooded five times. Who wants to go through that?”

Baldone says that many of the people who continually get flooded are those who live in the fishing villages and who

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Leadership & Education are poorer folks who live there because they can’t move and their work is there. He says they’re used to hurricanes at this point, but this manmade disaster is a big hit for them.

“We’ve been whacked and whacked and whacked, but we have to live here if we want to supply the nation with seafood and energy,” he said. “This manmade disaster, the oil spill, just threw people who were already on their knees down to the ground because it’s a huge economic impact.

At least with the natural disasters, these guys could go out and shrimp and make some money. With the oil spill, that shut them down for a long while, damaging their ability to make a living.”

He said one charter fisherman in his area committed suicide because of the oil spill, while there has been a spike in psychological issues as well. “When your livelihood is in jeopardy, it’s amazing what it does to the psychology of people. It makes them lose hope sometimes, but overall, the people have been resilient.”

After the well was capped, Baldone seemed to be happy, though he thought it took too long. “This is the end of the beginning,” he said.

The fishing has started once again, showing that the resiliency was likely to pay off for the residents of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. The biggest thing that Baldone wants to be sure everyone realizes is that seafood from the Gulf is safe.

“Our seafood is not tainted and is in great shape. We have done more testing than we have ever done on it in the past, and the oil has not affected the shrimp, the crab or the oysters. We need people to continue to buy Louisiana seafood, which is the best in the world.”

The Ecological and Environmental Impact of the Disaster The other side of the oil spill from the economic and emotional impact is the ecological and environmental impact.

When the well first exploded, no one knew the extent to which it was going to spew oil into the Gulf.

But over 90 days later when it was finally capped, and after we saw numerous animals wash up dead and beaches become oil stained, the estimates are that 4 million barrels (or 170 million gallons) of oil were released into the pristine Gulf of Mexico waters, making it the worst accidental offshore oil spill in history.

For Jim Goldasich, Northern Michigan ’66, the news of the spill was devastating, as he knew the environmental

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impact would be felt far and wide. He has been working in the environmental field for nearly 40 years, and has a business in southeast Florida where he does environmental assessments, natural resource analysis and restoration, and water quality studies.

There are a number of environmental impacts that can be talked about relating to the oil spill. From the oil itself to the dispersants that were used to remove the oil from the surface, there was going to be a major impact from a spill this large.

But even before talking about that, from Goldasich’s perspective, even drilling the wells could cause some environmental impact because we are taking an industry and inserting it into an ecosystem that we don’t fully understand. “The best engineering plan is only as good as our minds can make it, and if we don’t fully understand the environment in which we’re working, there is always room for a catastrophe such as what we’ve seen here,” he said.

Interestingly, he points out that there is a bit of a paradox, because even the ships that were out trying to clean up and skim the oil from the surface need oil themselves, so we need to be willing to go to the places where it is plentiful so we can utilize it.

Setting that aside, the BP oil disaster caused a great deal of environmental issues for not only the fish and other animals, but also the grasses and marshes. And if it would have gotten into the loop current and made its way to Key West, the coral reefs may have been damaged.

The most difficult part of assessing the environmental impact is that much of it isn’t able to be seen with the naked eye being that it is underwater and often in nearly invisible, but potentially toxic concentrations. According to Goldasich, “The oil you see isn’t the only oil that is out there, so the oil is impacting more than just the beaches and the marshes and the coast. There are going to be larger impacts in the future at the other end of the spectrum like microorganisms and other things further down the food chain.”

Probably the worst news is that while we have been able to see and feel the economic impact already with tourism and industries that Baldone talked about earlier, we won’t be able to measure the full environmental impact for many years.

“If you look at a glob of oil or a tarball that washes up on shore, that causes great harm to tourism and wildlife that might be along the beach like some birds and fish,” he said.

“But next to that tarball in the water column is some of the shorter chain hydrocarbons that are the components of that oil, and typically those are actually more toxic forms of hydrocarbons that can be utilized by organisms, breathed in and incorporated into their tissues, and then make their way up the food chain.”

An oil protection boom deployed at Dauphin Island, Alabama to protect against the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill.

Just before the well was capped in August, there was a plume of oil that was found below the surface that was estimated at 22 miles wide, and Goldasich said that it was potentially holding much of these toxic hydrocarbons that are likely more accessible to the food chain. “We are likely to see changes to the populations that we know are there because of this, and maybe even the elimination of populations that we will never know for decades after this.”

Many people were concerned with the dispersants that were used to help get rid of the oil. Goldasich said that hindsight is likely 20/20 here. “Typically, you use dispersants in a small spill just to get rid of it, and the environment more or less assimilates that material. However, with 170 million gallons being discharged into the environment, you can’t disperse it all. And my gut feeling is that 22 mile wide sub aqueous plume is probably a result of the dispersants that were used.”

All of this damage and destruction, and we haven’t even talked about the effect on the marshes, one of the most

important areas that were affected. In fact, according to Goldasich, the marshes are where much of the wildlife in the ocean gets its start. “Almost all of the organisms that make their living in the oceans, the Gulf or the estuaries have some portion of their life stage in the marshes, and typically it’s their immature stages. If the marshes are not there, whole age classes of organisms will be gone. What happens when we remove a section of the pyramid of life? I am not sure anyone knows the answer to this question.”

A closing startling and frank assessment from Goldasich was this: we are going to see and hear about the impact that this spill has had on the Gulf for decades. “We are going to see people scratching their heads with new answers and changes for decades.”

All in all, the BP oil disaster was just that, a disaster.

Hopefully the two brothers who provided their expertise have provided you with some additional information about the disaster and its impact in a number of different ways.

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Leadership & Education

UNDERGRADUATES

HELP SAVE

MAN AND WOMAN IN WRECK

(L-R) Beta Omega undergraduates Cody Crocker ’09, Alex Calabrese ’08, Anthony Mariano ’08, and Jacob Pierson ’09 helped save a man and a woman who were involved in a car crash in July.

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Building Better Men. Better Men. Better Lives.

They’re more than taglines and neat little sayings. Building better men is something that Delta Sigma Phi is doing on a daily basis, and part of being a better man is leading when difficulties arise. That’s what happened in July when four brothers from the Beta Omega Chapter at the University of Arizona and a friend were returning from a trip to the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park in California.

It was 2 am, and Anthony Mariano, Arizona ’08, was driving along I-10 in central Arizona when the car came upon the only other car on the road. This car was driven by a man that would slow down, and when the Delta Sigs would speed up to pass, he would speed up to block them. The driver was was swerving and driving erratically while the car containing the Delta Sigs was behind him.

At one point during the drive, Mariano noticed the driver of the other car drift and hit the shoulder in the middle of the freeway – flipping the car a number of times ending up in the ditch between the eastbound and westbound lanes. It was 2 am and pitch black in rural central Arizona, and according to Cody Crocker, Arizona ’09, the car in the ditch and the car containing the Delta Sigs were the only two on the road.

Immediately after seeing the car flip, Mariano pulled the Delta Sig car over and the brothers sprung into action to assist those involved in the accident. According to Crocker, “It was a surreal moment. We hit the brakes, found flashlights and water in the car, and ran over to see what was going on. Myself and our female

passenger called the police from the other side of the road while the others went over to see what was happening.”

What the brothers (Mariano, Jacob Pierson, Arizona ’09, and Alex Calabrese, Arizona ’08) came upon when they got to the car that had flipped was a young female passenger not older than 18 saying that she could not find her boyfriend – the injured male driver. With their flashlights, the brothers went into the ditch where the found the car flipped on its hood, and came upon the injured driver who was thrown from the car because he was not wearing a seatbelt.

The injured driver, who was 18 or 19 years old, had a head gash that was badly bleeding. After attempting to give the man water, the brothers held him down and applied pressure to the wound on his head with Pierson’s t-shirt that he had removed.

It took 15 minutes for the first police car to arrive, and the female passenger of the wrecked car was treated for a bleeding leg while the police called an ambulance and a helicopter to remove the injured male driver. After approximately two hours, the brothers and their passenger were back on the road home to Tucson.

On the ride home, the brothers and their female passenger reflected on the incident, wondering what would have happened if they hadn’t been there. “It’s a weird feeling, because thinking about it, I don’t know if anyone would have seen it at night,” Crocker said. “They could have almost been hopeless in a way until the sunrise, which would have been five or six hours.”

To show their concern, before the people were taken to the hospital, the brothers got the injured driver’s first

and last name, and tried to reach out to the hospital where he was taken to get an update the next day. Because of HIPPA laws, the hospital was unable to release the information, other than to say that the man’s family was with him at the hospital.

“I just wanted to see if he was alright,” Crocker said about why the brothers wanted to follow up the next day. “We knew it was serious because they had to evacuate him, and we thought it would be good to check up on him since I think I would want to talk to someone if they helped me after I was involved in a bad incident like that.”

Looking at the whole situation, the brothers’ last act of calling to check on the injured man the next day exemplify one of the taglines above – Better Men. Better Lives. Just about anyone would likely stop in the situation that the brothers found themselves. However, not everyone would have asked to find out the person’s name, and then try calling to ensure that they were ok the next day.

Are they heroes? According to Crocker, they aren’t. “I feel like what we did is what everyone should do. It wasn’t like we stopped and talked about whether we should help them.

We just did because it was the right thing to do.”

Whether they think they are heroes or not, the brothers who were involved in helping the man and his passenger through this difficult situation exemplify what Delta Sigma Phi is all about – they are leaders in the truest sense of the word.

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Leadership & Education

ALUMNI PROFILE ELMER DOTY, MISSOURI S&T ’72

Using the skills he learned while an undergraduate in the Delta Epsilon Chapter at the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri University of Science & Technology), Elmer Doty,

Missouri S&T ’72, has developed into quite a corporate leader.

During his time in the chapter, Doty took a number of roles, but his time as the chapter’s president really stood out. “What made the chapter distinctive was our focus on leadership,” he said. “Becoming the president during my junior year was a special experience. We often talked about servant leadership, and more than anything, that has helped me the most in my career.”

Most recently, he has been using the skills he honed back in the chapter in his role as President of an aerospace business with nearly $2 billion in sales and over 6,000 employees.

Serving as a corporate executive wasn’t in his plans when he first got out of college. Originally, he just wanted to design and build things as an engineer. He had majored in nuclear engineering, and upon graduation went to work at GE in a number of roles. After going back to grad school to complete a master’s in mechanical engineering, Doty went on to hold positions in which he built nuclear reactor internals, built and designed steam turbines, and manufactured pumps.

He then got into management level positions, the last of which prior to his current position included running the combat vehicle part of a company called United Defense, which is now a part of BAE Systems. That company was responsible for 85% of vehicles used by the U.S. Army and Marines as the country went into war in early in the last decade.

In 2006, Doty came on board as President and CEO of Vought Aircraft Industries, a company that had gone through some difficult times. After starting in the 1990s as an offshoot of Northrop’s non-core businesses – commercial aircraft structures and non-Northrop defense aircraft structures – Vought was struggling. The company was losing a lot of money and

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execution was poor, and it needed a strong leader to bring it back from the brink. Doty was the right man for the job.

“When I came in 2006, what was so appealing about this company was that it was a great company that had been through some very challenging times, and was blessed with an amazing workforce that wanted and deserved to be successful,” he said. “So, it was a leadership opportunity for me.

How do we start knocking down the barriers to help this great workforce be successful?”

Knocking down barriers was almost literal. The company was inundated with layers of management, which were remnants of when it had been part of a much larger company.

When Doty first started, his first task was to strip out the layers, giving decision-making authority to the lowest possible level. With those structural changes also came some difficult decisions, as Doty had to decide which of the managers who were in place were right to continue in leadership roles, and which weren’t.

He had four criteria that helped him make the decision, which are also good criteria for people looking to become leaders to follow: 1. A leader has to be a role model for the organization.

You’ve got to be someone who behaves in a way that is consistent with what you say you want others to do.

2. A leader has to walk the talk. If you say these are our values and our standards of behavior, then you need to behave that way.

3. A leader has to truly support the people who are relying on you to lead them. You have to grow and nurture them. You can’t just exploit them.

4. You have to play team ball. You have to support the people around you, and it can’t be just about you.

After sitting down and grading each of the managers on these four criteria, his choices were easy. “When you find out someone goes 0-4, you’re wasting time. If they’re 3-4, you’ve got something to work with. That might sound trite, but if you don’t do those four things, people are not going to follow you,” he said.

Doty’s leadership style can be boiled down to the following: always create an environment where people can be successful in what they’re trying to do. His role as the president and CEO is to set the tone for the company, but most of his effort is to set up the environment for success to happen.

In order to develop that environment, he needed to get a good leadership culture in place, one that strives for continuous improvement. According to Doty, “Here we had all these wonderfully capable people with wonderful platforms, but they didn’t have a common touchstone or a sense of direction. We didn’t have the measures to track improvement.”

Under his leadership, the company went back to basics to develop the culture that was needed. They first calmed down all of the employees who were feeling as though the company was going under, and helped them understand that it was going to be ok. Once everyone calmed down, they got to work repairing what was wrong, like the layers that were in the company.

They then instilled a culture that helped the employees understand that measurement was going to happen and that goals were going to be set. “People really like to be successful.

All you need to do is show how you’re going to measure success, and then reward it. People like to win.”

Every four to six weeks, Doty connects with the employees at the company’s eight locations across the country, holding meetings with a cross-section of them to talk about the company and hear what’s on their minds. While this might be seen in different cultures as undercutting the line management, in Vought’s culture it is an opportunity for the CEO to reinforce what the managers in the plants are saying. “To me, when I can go do that, and it can be construed by the line management as reinforcing their message and helping them, then I know we really have a healthy culture,” Doty said.

This leads into the other tenant that Doty uses in his leadership role – listen to and take care of your employees. To that end, the company has developed a top notch wellness program complete with free health screenings for employees and their family members at each location’s company picnic.

These screenings include a health risk assessment, and the company provides the resources for the employees to be successful in lowering their risk profile. These resources include putting into place some fitness facilities and web sites that allow the employees to complete objectives to reduce their healthcare premiums.

“We’ve changed a number of people’s lives by providing the resources so they could be successful,” Doty said.

“Everybody wants to be healthy, and many people are motivated to do it. So, if you provide them with the resources and the expertise, they’ll get there.”

The company’s care for their employees also shines through with the fact that they have lowered their injury rate by over 60% through aggressive attention to occupational safety, and have lowered their workmen’s comp claims also by 50% in the three and a half years since Doty began in his role.

In June 2010, a now well-functioning Vought was acquired

by Triumph Group Inc. (NYSE: TGI) in a transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion. This merger is a successful outcome for the company that creates a leading Tier Onesupplier with strong positions in both commercial and military platforms. Doty will be serving the company on its board of directors, and after a period of transition will have the chance to apply his leadership experience to more philanthropic pursuits.

He has a strong passion for the cause of at-risk children, and advises and works with several NGO’s as well as serving on the board of the Congressional Coalition for Adoption Institute.

Additionally he serves on the Board of the American Heart Association and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Cooper Institute, a non profit organization founded

by Dr. Kenneth Cooper that conducts research in epidemiology, exercise physiology, behavior change, hypertension, children’s health issues, obesity, nutrition, aging, and other health issues.

For all of the aspiring leaders out there, Doty’s advice is to live a balanced life, and to hone your interpersonal skills.

“There’s a direct correlation between your interpersonal skills and your success,” he said. “Interpersonal skills are not something that are taught in school. They’re something you learn in the Fraternity. That’s where I learned interpersonal skills, and that’s where I learned how to get people to do what you want them to do. To me, the greatest benefit of Fraternity life was learning how to do things through other people.”

As someone who said that his leadership in the Fraternity has helped him the most in his career, the words of Elmer Doty will hopefully make our aspiring leaders realize it’s time to step up and utilize the Fraternity as their stepping stone to greatness. He certainly did.

Elmer Doty resides in Dallas with his wife, Sandra. They have four grown children, a daughter who works for a mutual fund company in Boston, a son who is an accountant in Mississippi, a son who is a banker in Kansas City, and a son who is a student at Dallas Baptist University.

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Tech Trends

U.S. Renewable Energy Technologies: ELECTRICITY SYSTEM APPLICATIONS

By Bob Westby, SD School of Mines ’67

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A profound transformation is required to move from today’s energy system to a sustainable energy system. Today’s U.S. energy system is dependent on foreign oil, subject to price volatility, increasingly unreliable, two-thirds of the source energy is lost and produces 25% of the world’s carbon emissions. The attributes of a sustainable energy system are carbon neutrality, efficiency, diverse supply options, sustainable impact on resources, creation of high value jobs and accessible, affordable and secure.

This transformation requires bold goals and new approaches in the development of a sustainable transportation system and a carbon neutral electricity system. This article focuses specifically on the development of the electricity system transformation and role of renewable energy technologies. The intent of this article is to provide a perspective on the potential of renewable energy to significantly increase its contribution to electricity use in support of achieving a sustainable energy system at “speed and scale.”

This 2008 generation mix demonstrates the relatively small impact of the 3.3 % non-hydro renewable energy sources at 37 GW and 125 TWh. Wind and biopower4 lead the renewable energy power sources at 52% and 50% contributions respectively. Geothermal follows at 15% and solar at 0.8%.

Renewable Energy Resource Potential In providing a picture of renewable energy in the U.S., it is instructive to start with the theoretical potential of each primary renewable energy resource (Figure 2). Theoretical (total) potential is a measure of the maximum potential of a resource. In determining the realizable resources potential, theoretical potential would be reduced to account for technical, economic and market limitations respectively.

Electricity Production in the U.S. Our electricity system is currently greater than 70 percent dependent on fossil fuel. As of 2008, the total installed capacity of the U.S. electricity system is some 1,000 gigawatts (GW)1 capable of generating some 4,100 terrawatt hours (TWh)2 (Figure 1). The primary fuel sources used to produce our electricity are coal (48.5%), natural gas (21.3%), nuclear (19.7%), hydroelectric conventional (6.1%)3, other renewable energy sources (3.3%) and petroleum (1.1%).

Figure 2: U.S. Renewable Energy Resources (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Figure 1: 2008 U.S. Electricity Generation Mix (EIA Electricity Monthly, March 2009)

Solar represents the most significant resource with a 206,000 Gigawatt (GW) potential for photovoltaics (PV)5 and an 11,100 GW potential for concentrating solar power (CSP)6. The wind resource is 8,000 GW (on shore) and 2,200 GW (off shore to 50 nm). Geothermal follows at 39 GW from conventional sources, 520 GW from Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and 4 GW from co-produced sources. The biopower resource is some 78 GW. The U.S. renewable energy resources are more than capable of meeting a significant portion of future U.S. electricity system needs.

1A gigawatt (GW) is a unit of power equal to 1 billion watts; 1 million kilowatts, or 1,000 megawatts. Electric power is measured in watts, where a watt equals 3.412 Btu 2A terrawatt hour (TWh) is a trillion watt hours. Electric energy is measured in watt hours. It is commonly expressed in kilowatt hours (kWh) which equals a thousand watt hours.

3Because hydropower is considered a conventional source of energy, it is accounted for separate from other renewable sources of energy.

4 Biopower, or biomass power, is the use of biomass to generate electricity. As used here biopower system technologies include direct-firing and cofiring (typically with coal).

5 Photovoltaics (PV) cells convert sunlight directly into electricity.

6 A new generation of power plants with concentrating solar power (CSP) uses the sun as a heat source to boil water. The steam from the boiling water spins a large turbine, which drives a generator to produce electricity. The three main types of concentrating solar power systems are: linear concentrator, dish/engine, and power tower systems.

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Tech Trends Current Status of Renewable Energy Electricity Technologies Renewable energy has been contributing to a growing portion of the U.S. electric capacity additions, and this trend is expected to continue. In 2008, renewable energy comprised 45% of new capacity additions vs. some 10% in 2005 (Figure 3). Of the total annual capacity additions, wind accounted for 41% with 4% coming from other renewable energy sources.

range (without incentives). PV affords the most potential of the renewable energy resources. An attribute of PV technologies that will increase its use is that it is particularly suited for distributed applications. In distributed applications, PV can be located locally at the load it is offsetting (e.g.in residential, commercial and large onsite applications).

In these applications, the PV system is located “behind customer electric meter� and is net metered.7 For more information on PV technologies see http://www1.eerie.energy.gov/solar/.

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) Technology There is currently some 432 MW of installed CSP capacity with 81 MW under construction. CSP projects are typically located in the Southwestern U.S. where the solar insulation characteristics are optimal for CSP applications (e.g. sufficient level of direct beam radiation). CSP produces electricity in the range of 10-14 cents/kWh (without incentives). For more information on CSP technologies see http://www1.eerie.energy.gov/solar/.

State Policies Advance Renewable Energy

Figure 3: Status of Renewable Energy Electricity Technologies (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Here is an overview of the primary renewable energy technologies:

Wind Technology As of 2009, there is 35 GW of installed wind capacity representing 1.8% of the total U.S. electricity generation.

Ten GW was added in 2009 representing over 39% of new domestic electricity generation capacity. Wind projects are predominantly utility-scale applications and can be cost competitive with other central, fossil fuel generation sources. Wind produces electricity in the 6-9 cents/kWh range (without incentives) at good wind sites. Initial offshore wind development is underway. For more information on wind technologies, see http://www1.eerie.energy.gov/windandhydro/.

Photovoltaics (PV) Technology There is currently some 1,100 Megawatts (MW) of installed PV capacity. PV produces electricity in the 28-46 cents/kWh

The states have taken the lead in advancing the use of renewable energy for electricity production. Twenty-nine (29) states and Washington, DC have adopted what is known as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) (Figure 4, see page 43). A RPS is a state policy that requires electricity providers to obtain a minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy resources by a certain date. Wind is the primary electricity resource implemented under a RPS. To assure some portion of the renewable energy projects implemented support solar and customer siting, a majority of the states that have adopted RPS have also established minimum solar or customer-sited requirements. A Federal RPS policy is also under consideration.

The impact of adopting RPS policies is considerable, as together these states account for more than half of the electricity sales in the U.S. The Global Environment Fund estimates that the current state RPS would ultimately result in the installation of over 75,000 MW of renewable energy sourced electricity generation.

The implementation of RPS is critical as they provide the added financial incentive that is driving the renewable energy market. These projects are primarily wind, PV and CSP. The other financial incentives are the federal tax credit and the sale or savings from the electricity produced. RPS are

7 Net Metering. In general, net metering policy allows customers to produce onsite electricity and sell excess generation to the utility at a set price. Net metering policies are market-based incentives addressing the market barrier of project economics that exists for most high initial cost renewable energy technologies. The main goal of most net metering policies is to create incentives for private investment in distributed renewable energy technologies by providing value to the electricity generation that, during certain times of day or season, exceeds the customer’s electricity demand.

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structured such that the incentives accrue to the owner of the system and are tailored to the ownership category. For example, home owners who purchase PV systems are eligible to receive a residential incentive. Similarly, business owners can leverage commercial level incentives. Third party owners of systems are also eligible to receive the incentives.

Importantly, this has created a robust private sector business for the development of utility-scale systems for the sale of power to the grid (utility) and the larger systems located on customer sites that offset their loads. This developer business model also allows public sector entities, who cannot leverage the federal tax credits, to participate in the utilization of renewable energy. The utility benefit is that it is fulfilling its RPS mandate for which at a minimum they recover their costs. Utilities can also act in the project developer role.

Figure 4: State Renewable Portfolio Standards

Future Use of Renewable Energy Technologies In summary, the theoretical potential for renewable energy resources exists to provide a significant portion of the U.S. energy needs by 2050. There are also policies, as demonstrated by the states’ RPS, which can successfully drive the implementation of these resources. Going forward, the relevant question is: what will the role of renewable energy be in the future generation mix?

In general, it is widely held that to meet electricity needs in the 2050 timeframe, the U.S. must achieve an optimal portfolio of coal, nuclear, and renewable energy that includes a viable carbon sequestration capability. It is no longer an “either-or” scenario, but rather all sources of generation will be required to meet future power needs. With regard to renewable energy use projections, initial scenario assessment work has been completed or is underway.

Of note is a wind industry study entitled: 20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to the U.S. Electricity Supply (http://www.20percentwind.org/).

This assessment explores one scenario for reaching 20% wind energy by 2030 and contrasts it to a scenario in which no new U.S. wind power capacity is installed. The primary findings are: 20% wind electricity would require about 300 GW of wind generation; there are affordable, accessible wind resources available across the nation; the costs to integrate wind are modest; raw materials are available; and transmission is a challenge. A study of PV penetration of 15% by 2030 is underway.

Another approach to benchmarking renewable energy use is to identify a future requirement of the U.S. electricity system and perform a related assessment. The need to significantly reduce carbon emissions from the U.S. electricity sector in the 2050 timeframe is such an acknowledged requirement. Renewable energy resources with a penetration rate on the order 80% offer a solution to achieving the required carbon emission reductions. An assessment of this scenario is currently under development through a NREL futures study.

Some of the study’s preliminary findings provide useful insights into the future use of renewable energy resources.

• The development of transmission and distribution system that is not a limiting factor in accessing new sources of energy is required.

• A variety of renewable energy technologies can be deployed throughout the continental U.S. to meet projected electricity demand.

• The electric system integration and operational challenges associated with high levels of variable generation from wind and PV resources can be managed.

• Additional transmission infrastructure is required to support the geographical diversity of U.S. renewable resources, but the needed investment for up to 80% renewable energy is modest relative to total electric supply costs.

• An 80% renewable electricity future will require critical transitions in the build out of renewable electricity generating assets, transmission infrastructure, system operations, and economics and finance.

For more information renewable energy resources, technologies and policies, visit www.nrel.gov. The Resources links on the left side of the home page are particularly useful.

Robert Westby, SD School of Mines ’67, has been a member of the senior management team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO since 1985. NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy dedicated to the research, development, commercialization and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. The content of this article is the opinion of the author.

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Travel & Tourism

SOUTH AFRICA

AND THE

WORLD CUP

By Walid Neaz, Georgia Tech ’06 and Stephen Munna, Georgia Tech ’03

This past summer, the world came together in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Among the millions there were four of us – all Delta Sigs – that decided that this was an event so big that we had to see it in person. Greg Munna ’01, Stephen Munna ’03, Michael Kraus ’05 and Walid Neaz ’06 are all from the Alpha Gamma chapter at Georgia Tech, are great friends, and are passionate fans of soccer. The four of us and two other friends started planning this by sharing work schedules and tight budgets to plan an experience of a lifetime.

Before any plane tickets or hotels were booked, we had to play the lottery – the World Cup Game Ticket Lottery.

With luck on our side we were able to snag tickets to four games in three different cities. We purchased our flights, which to our surprise were affordable, and arranged places to stay. We were fortunate to have acquaintances in two of the cities we were traveling to. The Munna brothers had a childhood friend that lived in Durban, and we got in touch with a friend of one of our fraternity brothers. Finding a place to stay in Cape Town wasn’t too hard. After only a few minutes on the internet, we were able to find a backpacker hostel there.

With match tickets secured, plane tickets purchased and living arrangements taken care of, we only had minor details left to figure out. How much currency to convert and what cell phone to bring were a few, but the most

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important one was what exactly to pack for the 18 day journey since it was winter in South Africa. Each of us had different opinions about everything, but we eventually came to a general consensus that played an important role in the success of the adventure.

Thursday, June 23 was a fantastic day since the USA had just beaten Algeria in the very last minute of injury time to advance to the round of 16. It was amazing to find out how many Americans were keeping track of the game and celebrating when Landon Donovan scored deep into injury time.

We were especially ecstatic, since if USA were to go to the Quarterfinals, we would be able to witness them in action as that game was one of the four tickets we had won in the lottery.

The next day, June 24, was the day for our departure. Greg and Walid were stunned as they found out while heading to the Atlanta airport that Italy had lost and thus we would not get to see them play The Netherlands. In New York (the second leg of our trip), we met up with Stephen while we eagerly checked our phones hoping it was our friends sending jealous text messages.

Instead, we found out it was from Michael. He was stuck on the runway in Boston due to bad weather and his flight was to be delayed arriving at JFK. Michael finally landed 10 minutes before the international flight check in closed, giving him little time to reclaim

his checked baggage and run halfway across JFK airport to our terminal. The engineers that we all were knew that it was not possible for him to reclaim his bag and make the flight. We made the decision for Michael to bypass baggage claim and run straight to our terminal.

Minutes later, Michael arrived at the terminal in full sprint to manage to check into the flight just seconds before they closed.

With tragedy adverted we were underway to South Africa with a quick 15 hour layover in Madrid, which involved some sight seeing and fraternizing with the locals. We finally arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, only to reboard a plane to go to Durban first. While in Durban we stayed with a wonderful friend of the Munna brothers for three days, the family taking us into their lives. The group got to experience their first ever World Cup game between The Netherlands and Slovakia, but not before our hearts were broken as we watched the USA team lose to Ghana at a local restaurant. We were told by the family that Durban is a summer town and at this time of the year, it was winter. Even though we were unable to experience all the culture of the city, we still enjoyed this stop on the excursion.

We arrived in Cape Town on a rainy day. The ride from the airport to the hostel was barely 20 minutes. Looking through the windows of the taxi, we could see miles of green fields and vine-

Delta Sigs Kraus and Neaz inside Durban’s Stadium during their first World Cup game.

yards. Off in the distance, there were mountains, but just before those fields, there were acres of African Townships – houses put together by sheets of plywood and sheet metal. To see a sight like this for the first time gave us a very sobering feeling. We all agreed that we were very lucky to have the opportunities we’ve had in our lives. The time in Cape Town was such an unforgettable experience for us. We watched the eventual World Cup champion Spain defeat Portugal, and we traveled with Cape Town locals while they took us to wine tours, mountain hikes and even the local night life. We did not want to leave the beautiful Southern coast of South Africa, but there was much more on the agenda for the group.

Back in Johannesburg, we had an experience completely opposite what we had gone through so far. Our original plan to stay with a friend of a fraternity brother didn’t work out. After being afraid for our lives of the living arrangements, we decided to relocate to the University of Johannesburg dorms that were open for visitors. We quickly became friends with one of the students who acted as a guide to the games and around the city. While in Johannesburg, we experienced our own special 4th of July. We walked to one of the two fast food restaurants in the area and ordered 2 big buckets of KFC and washed it down with delicious coke to celebrate Independence Day. We caught the madness that happened in the

Brothers and friends during their safari in Africa.

Uruguay/Ghana game in the magnificent Soccer City and watched Spain go to the semifinal for the first time by beating Paraguay in Ellis Park.

Those were the last of the games for which we had tickets, so we planned a mini road trip for the remainder of the vacation. Using the internet at the university, Michael was able to plan a four day road trip to go to a Safari. The trip started from Johannesburg and traveled just outside the city to a Lion park. We were able to pet lion cubs and feed ostriches there. Next, we traveled north to Modjadjiskloof for a short stop at a gigantic Baobab tree that famously had a bar built inside of the tree. The tree was seven stories tall and over 260 feet in circumference. While there, we were able to hang out with some locals and play card games inside one of the world’s oldest trees. Next stop on the road trip was to travel northeast to Kruger National Park on the Timbavati Game Reserve to experience a three day Safari. The Safari camp where we stayed was right in the middle of the bushes. At night, one could hear all sorts of animals and an occasional lion roar. The group was able to see elephants, giraffes, rhinos, water buffaloes, baboons, wart hogs, zebras and many more wild animals. One of the most exciting parts of the safari was during a game walk where we nearly saw an impala get devoured by a male leopard merely 100 feet from us. The road trip ended at a famous South African

Delta Sigs on Table Mountain in South Africa during the World Cup.

restaurant where we were able to devour some African delicacies such as couscous and kudu meatballs.

On our last day in South Africa, we went to the Apartheid Museum back in Johannesburg. This attraction was a good way to end the trip after we traveled around South Africa for two weeks experiencing the culture of the country. We came back to a place where we were able to learn from where all the culture came. The Museum went in depth on the lives of many people that played major roles in South African History. While we were there, we actually saw the Nobel Peace Prize winner Arch Bishop Desmond TuTu! The whole experience was very educational and was one of the best parts of our trip.

The plane ride home was an excellent time for us to reflect and share stories of our favorite memories of the trip.

We agreed that this trip was a perfect display of the Delta Sigma Phi values.

We experienced Culture, Harmony and Friendship on the trip and even after we left, these values have strengthened all of us in our lives. We are already thinking of going to Brazil for the next World Cup. We invite you to come along and share the experience.

For more information and to see a more detailed itinerary of the brothers’ trip, please visit www.deltasig.org/worldcup.

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Sports

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

BOBBY SHARMA Duke ’92, Vice President & General Counsel, NBA Development League

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 2010

8:00 am

I start each day before I even get to the NBA offices in midtown Manhattan on my daily commute, checking e-mails I may have received between going to bed and waking up, and reading/viewing the morning newspaper and newscast clips on my Blackberry. The NBA media department compiles an e-mail with links to every major media outlet mention of the NBA, the NBA Development League (“D-League”) and the WNBA, as well as each of the individual teams. It’s never possible to read every single story and view every single video, but it’s important to scan the headlines to ensure you are aware of everything you should be aware of as the work day begins.

9:00 am

Unless I have a 9:00 am meeting, I typically start the day in the office with a cup of tea and more reading, this time of The New York Times (to maintain an awareness of the larger context within which our product fits, as well as to be an informed citizen of the world) and the SportsBusiness Journal, the trade publication of the sports business. Today, my first meeting is not until 10:00 am.

10:00 am

My first meeting is a bi-weekly meeting I have with the NBA Development League President, Dan Reed. During these meetings, Dan and I have a two-way dialogue, updating each other both on pressing items/issues and big picture items – legal, business, and operational.

These include long-term vision and strategies for how we can make the D-League the “perfect minor league for the sport of basketball” (one of our mission statements). NBA Commissioner David Stern started the D-League in 2001 under the umbrella of the National Basketball Association with the intent of having a stable source of talent development for players, coaches, referees, and even front-office executives. Just a few years into its existence, the D-League became the single source of NBA replacement player talent.

Every referee hired by the NBA and WNBA since 2002 has

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come from the D-League, and at the end of the 2009-10 NBA season, over 20% of players on NBA team rosters had spent time in the D-League either as players who were “called-up” to the NBA, or as assigned NBA players in their first two years playing for an NBA team. We are proud of our accomplishments at the D-League, but are always looking for ways to get better, to do more.

11:00 am

Between meetings, I am usually returning phone calls or e-mails. I pride myself in my professionalism at work, always seeking to respond to any messages as close to real-time as possible. Sometimes this is a real challenge, as between colleagues at the league office and at the teams, there is always someone who needs attention or a fire that needs to be put out. One of the main reasons the NBA, D-League, and WNBA offices are under one roof is to take advantage of the resources and synergies that a global company running three professional sports leagues presents.

The advantage of the ability to get face-to-face with the people you work with is immeasurable, and is something I always strive to do when possible. Technology is a great asset in creating efficiency, but at the root of every great enterprise is human capital. If there is one lesson I’ve learned in my eight years at the NBA, it’s that relationships are the key to success.

12:30 pm

Speaking of relationships, unless a deadline is looming, I always make a point of eating lunch with other people – never at my desk alone. Usually, I eat with colleagues at work, but I also find great value in making time to lunch with contacts outside the company with whom I don’t get regular time. Today I am taking a friend from the NHL to lunch at the NBA Café on the 20th floor of Olympic Tower, the main NBA office building on Fifth Avenue next door to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

1:30 pm

Back in my office after lunch, I work on several pressing items, including several team ownership issues, a

team sponsorship agreement matter, an arena lease, and a broadcasting regulation question that has arisen. If it seems like my responsibility set is broad, that’s because it is.

Professional sports leagues are heavily dependent on lawyers, as virtually everything they do relies (and is often driven by) rules/regulations and contracts. As the dedicated lawyer for the D-League, I’ve had the unique opportunity to work with every single department at the NBA – from Basketball Operations to Team Marketing & Business Operations, from Security to Finance, from Events & Attractions to International, from Communications to Marketing, and everything in between.

3:30 pm

I’ve also had the unique opportunity to work with some of the best lawyers in the world, which brings me to my next meeting – the NBA Legal Department Meeting.

This is run by the NBA’s General Counsel, Rick Buchanan, and the NBA Properties General Counsel, Bill Koenig.

During this approximately monthly meeting, Rick and Bill update all the members of the Legal Department (including about 20 lawyers) about various company-wide matters. In addition, there is usually an around-the-horn where each of us gives an update on our work and any interesting issues we’ve recently confronted. This helps keep each of us up to speed in our collective work, creating greater efficiency in information sharing and less duplication of efforts and mistakes. If the importance of good relationships is the key lesson I’ve learned at the NBA, then the importance of effective communication is a close second.

5:00 pm

My last scheduled meeting of the day is with NBA President of League & Basketball Operations, Joel Litvin (formerly the NBA’s General Counsel), NBA Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations, Stu Jackson (a former NBA player and NBA team General Manager), D-League Vice President of Basketball Operations, Chris Alpert, and Dan Reed. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss various rules changes that the NBA Competition Committee has been considering, and to see if any of them make sense for us to experiment with at the D-League level. One of the many functions of the D-League in furtherance of its mission to best serve the NBA and its teams, is to be the Research & Development arm of the sport of basketball. This ends up being a great meeting, with all of the participants engaging in a lively discussion of the game at its core, and how we can help make the NBA version of it a more exciting and entertaining value proposition.

6:30 pm

Toward the end of the day is when I actually get the most work done, free of the steady stream of e-mails, phone calls, and meetings that fill most of every work day.

One would think that a late-June day would present an opportunity to leave the office sooner rather than later, but as we say in the sports business, “there is no such thing as an offseason.” Even before the current season ends, we’re already hard at work, putting in the blood, sweat and tears to ensure the next one is even better than the last.

8:00 pm

Time to head home for dinner with my wife, Courtney (who, as luck would have it, is an amazing cook).

In the summer months, my ferry commute can be particularly beautiful, as the sun sets over the Hudson River. I try not to take it, or anything else in my life, for granted.

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Sports Alumnus Picked in the Third Round of the NFL Draft

Credit: Tony Gonzalez/ The Oakland Raiders Veldheer

It was a dream come true for Jared Veldheer, Hillsdale ’07. Back in April during the 2010 NFL Draft, Veldheer, who was projected to be a fourth round draft pick by many insiders, was waiting patiently for his time to come. It came at the 69th pick in the third round when his name was called as a pick of the Oakland Raiders.

After a stellar college career in which he never gave up a sack as the starting left tackle at Division II Hillsdale College, a playoff team his senior year, Veldheer worked hard and impressed everyone at the 2010 NFL Combine with top marks in most categories that were scored.

• Fastest Offensive Lineman (OL) in the 3-cone drill at 7.4 seconds and in the 20 yard shuttle in 4.51 seconds • 3rd best vertical jump at 33.5 inches • 4th fastest 40-yard dash for an OL – 5.09 seconds • 5th best OL in standing broad jump at 9’1” • 9th best OL in bench press, pressing 225 lbs. 32 times He is a beast of a man, standing 6 feet 8 inches tall, and weighing 315 lbs., Veldheer would seem to be the prototyp-

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ical NFL offensive lineman, and he prepared like it. According to his college coach Keith Otterbein, “He absolutely left no stone unturned when he came here to develop himself mentally and physically. A to Z, he did everything possible.”

Interestingly, as someone who started at left tackle throughout college, the position that is best known for protecting a right handed quarterback’s back, Veldheer won the starting Center spot in preseason workouts for the Raiders.

Moving forward, keep an eye on fellow Delta Sig Jared Veldheer as he begins his NFL career in 2010-11.

Alumnus First in the Nation to 2,000 Wins in High School Girls Softball

Niemeyer

For Larry Niemeyer, Western Illinois ’56, being the first coach in the country to reach 2,000 wins in high school girls softball speaks more to the players he’s had than himself as a coach. However, in his 51 years as a coach, he has reached the milestone – with an amazing 80% winning percentage – 2,021 wins and 415 losses.

Niemeyer began his lifelong career and passion for coaching in Adel, Iowa in the early 1960s after graduating from Western Illinois. In 1978, he moved to Cedar Rapids to take over the Cedar

Rapids Jefferson High School program, and has taken his teams to 26 state tournament appearances, winning four state championships.

The amazing thing about Niemeyer though is not his dedication to the game, but his dedication to making his players better. He is humble that way, and even after 50 years, he loves coaching.

“I still enjoy practice and working with kids to make them better. I enjoy the competition and the kids. I try to teach kids values and we try to play with discipline and structure,” Niemeyer said.

One of his greatest successes is seeing his players go on to become coaches themselves. In fact, his daughter Natalie is one of his assistant coaches for his team. She is grateful to have the opportunity to coach with him.

“To be able to coach with him and learn from him is a dream come true. All of my siblings have coached beside him.

It is a family affair,” she said.

“I don’t think the women who play for my Dad realize the impact he’s had on them until they’re out of his program for a few years. I’ve met so many people in college who can’t handle pressure, who don’t know the meaning of hard work, who don’t show respect for themselves or those around them. These are all things that my dad instills in his athletes, something that will benefit them throughout life.”

After winning his 2000th game, Niemeyer was able to fulfill one of his life’s dreams as he threw out the first pitch at the AAA Iowa Cubs game in June. A lifelong Cubs fan, he was thrilled and honored to be able to be a part of that game.

And we forgot to mention, around the time you’re reading this story, Niemeyer will have started his 51st year as a head coach in girls high school basketball. His record as a basketball coach before the 2010-11 season stands at 854 wins and 323 losses.

i spy D ELTA SIGMA PHI i spy DELTA SIGMA PHI is a feature where Delta Sigs, or Delta Sigma Phi’s letters, are found in interesting and unique places. Have you taken the flag to the top of a mountain, worn your letters in a foreign country, or done something unique with fellow brothers? If so, send us the photo and we will include the best of them in this section each issue.

Photos submitted must be at least 300 DPI (taken on the highest resolution of the digital camera you utilize and NOT on a camera phone), and should be e-mailed to Hammond@deltasig.org with an explanation and a proposed caption. We look forward to sharing more photos like the ones on this page in future issues!

Alumni of the Gamma Pi Chapter at Indiana University of PA, Jim Delbridge ’62, Joe Gallice ’62, Bob Brugnoli ’61, Herman Schiemer ’62, Bob Safran ’63, Ken Hill ’61, and Bob Miller ’62 during their annual five day golf challenge in Phoenix, AZ.

Four brothers from the Binghamton Colony Marc Benison ’09, Matt Coleman ’09, Josh Lampert ’09, and Anthony Zampardi ’09, visited the site of Woodstock.

John Raffaeli, Waynesburg ’72 (left in the Delta Sig hat), and his son at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on March 15, 2009.

Sean Blanche, UC San Diego ’03, during a recent trip to Machu Picchu in Peru.

Eric Nodge, Grand Valley State ’09, working at the Challenging Heights school in Ghana, Africa in the summer of 2010.

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Books By Brothers LEADERSHIP Leadership for Life – Your Guide to Becoming a Transformational Leader

By Doug Gehrman, Arizona State ’59 ISBN: 978-0981810867

What if you discovered you were already perfect? Leadership for Life provides the secrets for discovering your perfection, passion and purpose and your leadership role in the world.

Tapping the spiritual and secular wisdom about leadership you will discover how to lead a life of meaning and fulfillment. The self help nature of the book will not only improve your leadership effectiveness, but improve your relationships with others.

From 2001-2004 Doug Gehrman was assistant professor of management and program director of the MS-HRM program at Houston Baptist University, where he taught courses on human resources management and leadership.

Before joining Houston Baptist, Doug founded Bridge Consulting Group, which focused on helping clients manage change and develop leaders. Doug’s earlier experience included serving as Executive Vice President- Human Resources with Van Kampen Investments and in positions in mortgage banking and the petrochemical industries.

The Attraction Principle: Finding, Keeping and Teaming Passionate People

By James R. Lucas, Missouri S&T ’69 ISBN: 978-0982316115

“Passion and commitment are totally essential to performance.

Without passion you have employees who are just putting in time.”

– David Green, Founder, President & CEO, Hobby Lobby Book 2 is now available in the inspiring, eight-book series!

Leaders soon learn that it’s impossible to inject motivation into people who lack passion. So how do you find and keep the truly passionate, committed, pure-performance™ people who will take your organization to new levels of success? If you’re tired of gimmicks and fads and interviewing “flavors-ofthe-month,” this indispensable guide will show you how to get down to what really matters.

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The booklet provides five major sources of clues to help you identify passionate people, an elegantly simple way to determine whether this passionate person is right for this organization, 10 keys to keeping the people you’ve worked so hard to find, and 7 Keys to Effective Teams™.

Online programs as well as video and live conferences are available by Jim Lucas. Visit www.lumaninternational.com to select the ideal topic for your organization.

BUSINESS Almost Complete Book of Danisms

By Dan Drotzman, St. Cloud State ’81 ISBN: 978-1451534597

The Almost Complete Book of Danisms – A Verbal Slap in the Face Never Hurt Anyone, is a useful guide to regain control of a conversation that has lost its way. The book contains numerous witty phrases that allow the reader to build a repertoire of snappy one-liners that, once employed, will help them regain control of their out of control conversation. Along the way, the reader will discover for themselves what it would have been like to grow up in a small South Dakota town in the 1960s and 1970s like the author. If the reader is in a sales field, regardless of the product, they will discover the underlying secret that most sales people don’t know and why most sales people fail to close a large portion of their deals.

CIVICS/POLITICS A Street is Not a Home: Solving America’s Homeless Dilemma

By Judge Robert C. Coates, San Diego State ’57 ISBN: 978-0879756215 Like many politicians, reporters, social workers, and others concerned with the homeless, Robert C. Coates lived for a short time on the street. But rather than returning from his mission with yet another set of platitudes about the problem, the experience set him on the road to finding some answers.

A Street is Not a Home dispels the many myths about the homelessness crisis and clearly illustrates that the vast majority of America’s homeless can be helped.

Read his piece within the In Their Own Words section to learn more in depth about the issues surrounding homelessness in America that are included in this book.

America: In God We Trust?

By Ed Chambers, Arizona State ’79 ISBN: 978-1615792405

In just over 200 years the United States of America rose from being a colony of England to become the most prosperous country in the history of the world. What led to this prosperity? Was it really our own efforts or was Divine Providence involved?

Psalm 33:12 promises that a nation that honors God would be a blessed nation and America has indeed been blessed. Our Founding Fathers recognized the influence of God upon our nation and wrote this into the Declaration of Independence. Even our money reminds us that we as a people trust in God. Like Jerimiah of old, financial advisor and former pastor, Ed Chambers, warns against our selfish way of life. He presents compelling evidence that America might have finally gone too far in its pursuit of mammon, and in doing so finally tipped the scales of judgment against our nation.

HEALTH A Waltz Through La La Land: A Depression Survivor’s Memoir

By Robert Smola, Western Illinois ’86 ISBN: 978-1933794235

kill himself. He sat in a car with the motor running in a closed garage. He aborted the attempt when it took too long.

Following the incident, the patient’s condition continued to deteriorate. He frequently expressed a lack of interest in daily activities, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating. Insomnia, significant weight loss, and occasional psychomotor agitation were reported. His physical hygiene deteriorated, and he sometimes did not get out of bed. The patient often expressed feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and excessive and/or inappropriate guilt over a variety of issues. Inpatient was deemed appropriate when the patient could not make a commitment not to kill himself.

A Waltz Through La Land is a raw, real look at what happened to Robert Smola as he suffered from severe depression following graduation from Western Illinois University.

POETRY Rhythm & Blues of Love

By Blake Q. Hatfield (i.e. L. Quincy Waldron, Drexel ’98)

Alumnus Quincy Waldron, using pen name Blake Q. Hatfield, presents a collection of poems that chronicle the ebb and flow of love. From the highs and the lows to the problems we encounter in our pursuit of it, to the true meaning of what love is, Waldron examines a wide variety of topics in this 99 page self-published book. The contents include sections on the search, interaction, relationship, disturbance, deprivation, and enlightenment.

The book is available for purchase on www.lulu.com where you can search for the title for more information.

Be a Part of The Carnation Do you have a book for us to include in Books by Brothers? If so, contact

The Clinical Assessment: The patient is a twenty-two year old, single white male who was voluntarily admitted to RDS Forestedge Hospital on 10/5/89. The immediate cause of his admission was his severe depression and potential for suicide.

Approximately two weeks prior to admission, he decided to

editor Bruce Hammond by e-mail at Hammond@deltasig.org.

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In Their Own Words

TECHNOLOGY ON TODAY’S

COLLEGE CAMPUS

By Nick Gerhardt, Missouri ’08

I saw something unusual last month, an item rarely used by college kids today – a conventional alarm clock beeping incessantly from my roommate’s nightstand.

“Did you lose your cell phone or something?” I asked the stirring mass.

“No,” he replied groggily, “it just doesn’t charge any more.

I had to bring this from home.”

What a caveman.

Technology has completely changed the way we experience college today. From Facebook chat to online tests and quizzes, it’s a whole new dynamic in the modern realm of higher education.

Start with a cell phone, the digital umbilical cord of undergraduates and graduates alike. It serves every purpose from alarm clock to day planner, and has recently been branded as the primary medium through which people consume the news. Cell phones have changed the game for everyone, though, not just college students. Let’s take a look at some university-specific innovations.

Online Academia My father tells me he used to take quizzes in class. Can you imagine? The last quiz I took at a desk in a classroom was for Senior AP Statistics, a high school course.

Blackboard Academic Suite runs the show on the college level. This ingenious web site allows teachers to create everything from online homework assignments to full-blown finals and send it to all the students at once. These usually have a time limit – 10 or 15 minutes seems to be the standard for quizzes – and often must be taken by Midnight before the next class. It cuts down on the workload for Professors and TAs because it usually does the grading automatically, and spits a grade out as soon as the student submits their answers.

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The University’s Academic Dishonesty Policy has an infallible “honor system” in place to ensure students do not collaborate on these types of things, because as we all know, that would constitute cheating.

It constitutes another addition to the trend of technology finding ways to eliminate face to face interaction entirely.

Even group papers and projects can now be conducted without ever having to actually sit down with another human being. Blackboard has chat rooms and message boards integrated into its system, and even group papers (which may be a new innovation as well, I’m not sure) typically run through the Google Docs application, letting multiple sources write and edit a paper that updates in real time across platforms, without the unnecessary burden of human conversation.

Clickers Upon enrolling in any math class at most universities, a student must invest in four mandatory supplies: textbook, calculator, pencils… and a clicker.

A clicker looks a lot like your common television remote, but instead of you controlling the television, the clicker helps the teacher control you. Armed with rotary numbers and the occasional A-D:F-J button configuration for multiple choice questions, these little contraptions have forced the collegiate masses into actually participating.

The system goes like this. The professor displays a math equation on the digital projector and asks everyone in the room to find a solution. Merciful teachers give options via multiple choice. Students attempt an answer, type it into the clicker and direct the signal to a receiver in the front of the classroom. The projection updates live time, which is just great for those of us who wade through math a bit slower than the engineering majors.

Clickers can be used purely for practice or to award points toward the end-of-semester grade, depending on the professor’s preference and the course’s level of difficulty.

Most universities today utilize some form of electronically interactive hardware like this because it encourages (or forces) students to participate in class and learn more actively.

However, to counter this bit of positive technological advancement and all its potential to improve the scholastic environment, today’s students counteract with the two all-powerful distraction machines: cell phones and the more classroom friendly alternative, laptops.

Laptops Remember when you needed to enroll in an introductory technology class to use a computer at all? My Dad often muses about punch cards or whatever. These days most students seem to believe they need a computer just to make it through a day of class.

Microsoft Word’s notepad utility lets me record my professor's lecture while I take notes.

Every time I hit enter, it generates a new bullet and inserts a marker in the audio track so I can listen again to select portions of the lecture when I revisit the notes before a test. This marvelous innovation probably sounds like a God-send for those who remember cramming the night before a final wondering how “example: rock” possibly related to a discussion on racial politics in the 20th century.

However, as any professor with the cognizance to have their assistants monitor laptop activity quickly discovers, everyone in the room has Facebook, ESPN, Perez Hilton, or some other combination of web sites pulled up from the moment they sit down. Generation ADD has turned multi-tasking into an art form, for better or worse.

Facebook Before our parents poisoned it with their use of pathetically antiquated web acronyms that we all gave up on when we learned to drive, Facebook consisted of college students and college students alone. As such, it has woven its way through every facet of the collegiate experience. On any

given day, the average college student sinks between four and five hours per day into Facebook.

Facebook Chat, the built-in instant messaging service that the social networking site added in 2008, may constitute the single largest time-kill during class. I know I have used the feature in order to talk to the person right beside me during lecture on multiple occasions, as if we were passing notes, but without any way for the professor to bust us. I set up a date during History of American Journalism class, but that’s a story for another article…

Before you know it – hey class is over! Boy that flew by.

What did we learn about again?

I realize there’s more to life than wasting class time. The site changed the way clubs operate and recruit. Fraternity recruits have been known to pour through Facebook “rush” groups to see which organization knows the prettiest girls, has the coolest members, and so on. I remember trying to piece together each Fraternity’s campus reputation based on their Facebook page in high school, although I learned upon arrival I completely misjudged every single one.

No self-respecting club prints leaflets anymore – make a Facebook Group! When Habitat for Humanity has a last minute location change, Facebook helps the President or Secretary fire off a mass message that everyone will assuredly see before they would check their e-mail.

College has evolved into a technological landscape, and these small innovations just scratch the surface of the changing face of technology on our campuses today. Incoming freshman in my program are even required to own a Mac laptop, along with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Mandatory.

As in “before you arrive for class, bring pencil, paper, laptop and iPhone.”

Welcome to the new digital college.

Nick Gerhardt is a senior at the University of Missouri’s Journalism school and served as an intern in the Fraternity’s national office this past summer. While he may not be a math whiz like the engineering majors, he certainly has a way with sarcasm in his writing.

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In Their Own Words

American Homelessness: A PROFOUND SCANDAL

By Bob Coates, San Diego State ’57

Note: Brother Bob Coates is a 73-yearold, sitting San Diego Superior Court Judge, so serving for 28 years. He became involved with homelessness as a new judge in 1983, when he found himself required to sentence hundreds of homeless people each week, and he was supposed to so structure probation plans for each person, such that they would be “unlikely to return to the court.” On receiving Ethics Advice, Brother Coates organized the first-inthe-nation Mayor’s Task Force of the Homeless, which led him to write what remains the single-volume book on solutions to homelessness, A Street is Not a Home – Solving America’s Homeless Dilemma (see the Books by Brothers section of this issue). He can be reached at robertccoates@gmail.com Mass homelessness should not exist in America. It was not a part of the America I grew up in, after World War II, and when it “descended upon” the nation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was shocking. It was a phenomena, I have learned, that was partly “manmade,” created by policy decisions in

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our state and federal governments... that have yet to be re-examined.

These were: 1). The closing of our state mental hospital systems that were so criticized (and memorialized in movies like One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest and Snake Pit), but without any solid replacing systems even though medical science knows how to do so but it is now cheaper by the order of five.

So we do not bestir ourselves...

And, 2). The repeal, in 1981, of the half-century federal housing construction program, on the theory that such things would “trickle down,” and with concomitant urban renewal that stripped city after city of its SRO (single room occupancy) cheap housing... many disabled poor were simply evicted to the streets.

alcohol and drugs – and these two components overlap, about 50/50.

(In San Diego, for example, we set up a very successful SIP program to deal with our “chronic drunks,” and, once we had these individuals – on average, on the streets for 18 years – dried out... out would pop their deep mental illnesses: 100% of them were found to be dual-diagnosed). So roughly another half would be folks like you and me, pretty squared away but have suffered (according to the great sociologist, Peter Rossi from the University of Pennsylvania) two or three personal disasters, in quick succession, – such as a mental breakdown, spouse’s departure, loss of a job, or physical disability. These rehabbing homeless persons, with the good work of the panoply of fine, private institutions which have sprung up, will likely get out of the state of homelessness within a half a year.

Who else?

Causative factors also include the divorce rate, which has shot up since the 1960s; the rise in drug use and, I believe, the rise in nihilism within American society... Without a coherent philosophy, why not, some may think, become a nonstriver and homeless?

Lots of kids. The average age of a homeless American is now around 10 years. There are runaway and throwaway kids, and those with a parent, if they’re lucky, two. The sociology is changing with the down economy and the wars. We are seeing more families and veterans and elderly becoming homeless.

Who are these “new homeless”?

What are the answers?

Here are some rough stats: About a third are deeply, chronically mentally ill; another third are deeply into

Goodness, we ALL need to raise the need for mental health reform on the state level. The current condition is a

deep SCANDAL and ought not to be tolerated. Our country did not tolerate this in the past, and we ought not tolerate it now.

Will you permit me to share a personal observation? While I was first involved in this, my children were small, and I was acutely sensitive to their perceptions. They asked about shabby, raving people they saw on the streets... and they wanted to know why these folks were “not being helped?” It was tough to answer a small person’s mind easily... but as I tried, and as I heard the same sort of questions from others, a chilling thought occurred to me: it was inescapable to these perceptive, young people that the answer lay with their parents, with their kind, with their species, if you will. An initial idea was that their parents were heartless, but they saw that that wasn’t true. So a more awful idea started occurring: that they belonged to an incompetent species. I now believe that this conclusion, in the minds of our young, is truly inescapable. We are a powerless group!

These conclusions are, of course, profoundly untrue; they are pernicious lies and, when believed, tend to undermine the fabric of a civilized democracy. This motivates me to continue to seek solution to America’s homeless dilemma.

Secondly, citizens can support efforts and local institutions that are expanding housing options. The founder of the National Coalition for the Homeless, New York attorney Bob Hayes, declared: “The causes of homelessness are three – lack of housing, lack of housing and lack of housing.” Of course, the types of housing needed vary by sub-grouping: families, mentally ill, substance abusers, children and teens, the range of housing types is critical.

Does any of this touch your heart?

Your head? Is it not true that, “From those unto whom much is given, much will be required”? One further thing that you just might consider, is, RAISING A HUE AND CRY!!

bond eternal NAME David Duke Henry Daniels Ralph L. Romberger Dixon McCormack Ben F. Enfinger Elmer Lammon Taylor Rhodes Joseph A. Shrom Philip Cason Dominic A. Marks Cannon Edward L. Caum Paul Dastugue Harold Rasmussen Stephen Eyer William D. Francis John Rutledge Robert W. Myatt Robert Longfritz Tom Naylor James W. Cole Monte Correll Todd Butler Michael Frenchi Philip E. Kottler Donald Derr Francis A. Knight Lauren Mickle Robert Chervenak Rex Jorgensen Harold G. Teeple Harlend Shideler Roy F. Sunderwirth John Turner William R. Watts Robert Wier Willard Wood Irving G. Ewen Henry Brucker Joseph Pinkert Frederick G. Beyea Paul Thornburgh James Hunt Darrell E. Graves James Wommack Glen Muirbrook Telly Evans Ellery Gibson Lee Knox Allen C. Tinch Howard R. Pirch Roland Waterfield Jr. Richard L. Romines Robert Romines Jerry Seilhan Matthew Mashburn Edward Kish Granville B. Jennings Joel Setaro Robert E. Ready Steven Golladay David Simpson Richard McMichael

CHAPTER Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon Kappa Kappa Kappa Lambda Nu Sigma Sigma Upsilon Chi Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Gamma Alpha Epsilon Alpha Epsilon Alpha Zeta Alpha Eta Alpha Mu Alpha Xi Alpha Sigma Alpha Tau Alpha Upsilon Alpha Upsilon Alpha Chi Alpha Chi Alpha Omega Beta Alpha Beta Alpha Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Epsilon Beta Theta Beta Iota Beta Mu Beta Xi Beta Pi Gamma Epsilon Gamma Iota Gamma Iota Gamma Iota Gamma Nu Gamma Xi Gamma Xi Delta Theta Delta Iota Delta Pi Delta Pi Delta Pi Delta Tau Delta Omega Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon Rho Epsilon Omega Epsilon Omega Theta Epsilon Benedictine College

JOIN DATE 12/12/08 5/19/40 2/1/42 2/25/42 11/9/49 4/8/59 3/20/48 4/5/36 5/6/51 4/26/53 4/15/56 4/9/49 7/19/46 9/5/59 5/24/41 4/25/37 10/31/72 1/24/43 4/5/70 10/24/28 12/4/71 8/26/74 4/26/05 10/2/49 1/25/76 5/31/39 5/1/38 6/13/47 4/25/42 3/8/36 5/30/28 11/12/27 11/12/27 2/28/32 2/22/30 3/25/34 1/29/56 11/20/37 9/7/55 2/19/61 9/21/52 1/20/52 9/22/57 10/5/58 2/1/75 4/1/94 12/15/57 3/7/53 5/2/54 10/10/62 2/26/61 2/11/62 5/15/63 1/9/65 11/3/85 5/26/63 2/3/67 5/28/72 11/22/80 4/22/95 4/25/92 5/3/70

DECEASED DATE 5/2/10 10/1/03 4/23/10 2/24/10 5/28/10 5/8/09 7/12/06 5/1/08 1/1/07 2/15/95 5/28/09 10/23/03 2/25/10 9/22/07 5/4/10 7/9/09 5/1/10 11/3/09 7/15/08 8/7/05 9/16/09 7/8/10 4/9/10 6/29/10 7/26/10 8/1/03 12/25/04 5/8/10 12/17/09 3/22/10 1/1/54 6/10/93 8/1/10 7/31/96 8/1/10 8/1/10 3/5/10 1/29/10 5/5/10 5/28/10 1/1/06 7/1/08 2/28/10 7/10/10 7/13/10 6/16/10 4/27/10 2/15/10 8/20/09 4/29/10 2/16/10 3/29/10 3/29/10 5/3/10 11/17/08 12/26/93 5/28/10 8/25/10 7/31/09 8/8/10 1/1/06 12/1/09

Due to incomplete information, deceased dates may reflect the date the fraternity was notified.

FALL 2010

55

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2011 Delta Sigma Phi Convention July 28 – July 31, 2011 Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate