Ohio State University’s Alpha Zeta Partners recently held its Officers Retreat for the newly elected officers for the 2010-2011 academic year. Advisor Dr. Jill Pfister was generous enough to welcome everyone into her home for the event. The retreat began by going through each officer’s position and mentioning what future AZP or college events and activities may relate to or be a part of their particular duties...

For our chapter’s "New Member Welcome Dinner,” all current members were asked to bring some sort of food for a potluck style dinner to welcome class 12 of Alpha Zeta Partners to our organization. It was an informal gathering during our regular business meeting, and all incoming members were invited to attend this dinner to talk with current members and observe how our meetings are run...

Our service committee organized an Alpha Zeta sponsored Red Cross Blood Drive on the North Carolina State University Campus in the Talley Student Center on March 23.  Our duties were to publicize the event on campus and to assist at the donor site.  Brothers displayed banners and fliers across the campus two days prior to the event...

During Agriculture Awareness Week we hold a forum regarding the issues in agriculture to help educate the brotherhood, as well as the public.  We advertise this forum throughout the week through flyers and word of mouth.  This year the forum was held on Thursday evening, and was about how to start a career in agriculture, no matter what type of background you have.  Commissioner of Agriculture, Steve Troxler, opened up the forum by giving his story of how he became involved in Agriculture and how he got to where he is today.  We then heard from 3 other individuals, including Jerome Vick who gave a tour last year at his farm for NALC!  The floor was then opened up for questions. We had around 180 students attend this year.

Our Service chair contacted campus maintenance to see if there was anything that we could do in order to help make our campus a little more beautiful.  On May 4, 2010, nine brothers of the North Carolina Chapter of Alpha Zeta met at 2pm to clean-up a stream that runs through campus.  We started at one end of campus armed with trash bags and rubber gloves and picked up trash along the stream all the way to the other side of campus.  The stream runs along a trail that many joggers and bikers frequent along with several of our members.  Hopefully next time they will have a cleaner walk.

On Saturday morning, April 24, we had eight Alpha Zeta brothers travel to the 2010 Regional Boy Scout Camporee in Kinston, North Carolina.  Once we arrived we helped set up the BB gun ranges and then helped train the scouts on the proper way to use a BB gun. We also helped check-in the scouts, sign off on the requirements for badges, and we helped pass out the badges.  We wore AZ t-shirts and met several people that were there with their sons that were AZ alumni.  The alumni were very glad to see us actively involved in the community and shared with us some of their favorite AZ memories.

On Wednesday, April 28th, our chapter held their annual candlelight service for our graduating seniors after our regular business meeting.   This is a service that we hold at the end of each semester.  We all sit in a circle with the seniors on one side and share our favorite memories of Alpha Zeta and thank our seniors for all of their hard work and guidance.  The graduating seniors also give any advice that they may have and share their favorite memories as well.  It is always a very touching ceremony that we all enjoy.

Cal Eta had an ice cream social and their meeting on February 25 at their campus farm.  They chose that night for the ice cream social so their future initiates could interact with the current members.  They ate ice cream and played music and people socialized.  Their initiates benefited and so did the current members.  They had held an officer meeting one week prior to decide who would bring the ice cream and toppings.  Our Chancellor volunteered to bring all the items for the social and it was a great success!

In an effort to keep AZP alumni up-to-date on the happenings of the chapter, the alumni committee has created a quarterly newsletter. They hope this will help increase communication between the actives and alumni and are encouraging their alumni to give them some feedback and any ideas that they have for the next newsletters.  In future newsletters, alumni may submit updates for inclusion in the newsletter on things like the annual meetings, initiation and banquet .  Some alumni have expressed that they are encouraged by the turnout of AZP’s and how active the chapter is becoming in the college!

On March 6, five members of the Puerto Rico Chapter walked to the community of Mayaguez Terrace.  They picked up the recycling bags of the residents in the area that they left in their entrance ways.  They then took the bags to the designated area to be separated by numbers and to calculate ho9w much they collected.  This activity promoted the importance of recycling among our members and in the community.