President’s Message: A Path Into the Future by Kurt-Alexander Zeller

KURT-ALEXANDER ZELLER, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT, MU CHI, ATLANTA ALUMNI PRESIDENT@MUPHIEPSILON.ORG

A PATH INTO THE FUTURE

RUDZHAN NAGIEV

n June, I was thrilled to meet with the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation Board and with the International Executive Board for mostly face-to-face, honest-to-goodness in-person meetings (the first of my presidency) at the International Executive Office in Indianapolis. It was a joy to be together in the same room — working and learning and sharing insights and stories and laughter and food. (They eat well in Indianapolis!) Most of all, we shared our love, for our art form of Music and for each other in our bond of Friendship, as we strove to find ways that our fraternity can thrive and increase in Harmony, even in times that can seem very disharmonious.

And Mu Phi Epsilon is not immune to the challenges of these times. The headlines about stock market declines became eye-poppingly real when applied to the returns on our Foundation endowment. The COVID-19 pandemic may be receding, but it isn’t over, and we aren’t done dealing with its financial and social fallout on our fraternity, its members and the schools that host its chapters. The price of inflation we feel at the grocery store is also at work on the Fraternity’s expenses, from ritual supplies to insurance. Your International Executive Board had to consider the Fraternity’s budget for 2022-23 very carefully, adopting significant spending cuts as well as some increases in fees to ensure that Mu Phi Epsilon can close this fiscal year and open its 2023 convention in sound financial health.

You’ll read about some of the other decisions and plans the two boards made in this Triangle issue. (And more will come throughout the year.) The work of our members and chapters recognized with awards is extraordinary and should make us all proud to be their fellow Mu Phis! The IEB is continuing our theme of “Building Bridges” in 2022-2023 and will start two new initiatives: 1) opening a path into the future by harnessing the power of our MemberClicks platform to construct a learning management system that eventually could make training for members, officers, chapters and district directors available and immediately updatable online 24/7 and 2) reconnecting back to our past with an oral history project that will launch in late 2022. And, of course, we continue to make plans for our 2023 Convention, July 19-22 in Grapevine, Texas, where all of us can experience the joys of being gathered together again as we construct “A Bridge Forward” for Mu Phi Epsilon.