On Monday April 13th, the Florida Chapter initiated 13 pledges into the Fraternity. The ceremony took place at the Straughn IFAS Extension Professional Development Center. We also had 3 honorary initiates this semester, representing Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Entomology and Nematology, and Food Science and Human Nutrition departments. It was a great night filled with delicious food, good conversation, and an excellent speaker. Dr. Tony Adendoro from the Agricultural Education and Communication department talked about leadership, branding, and who you are. He is also the director for the Challenge 2050 project, which is a project headed by CALS to target the challenges in agricultural and natural resource industries by the year 2050. 
We also had awards for our pledge class for most outstanding officer, most outstanding pledge, and best paddle. Congratulations to the winners: Carson Cooper, Katie Bassett, and Madison Goodwin. 
We can't wait to see how these new brothers will continue to foster our founding principles and help our chapter grow. Congratulations PC Spring 2015! Welcome to the brotherhood.

Last night the Florida Chapter of Alpha Zeta had their Big/Little reveal and potluck hosted by the pledge class. I assigned corresponding costumes to both the Big and their Little. For example, we had Nemo and Dory, Men in Black and an alien, Batman and Robin. It was a fun time for everyone, and the pledges finally get to know who their Big is! I chose their Bigs based on speed dating that we had 2 weeks ago. All of the Bigs had a minute to talk to a pledge before moving on to the next one. Each pledge also filled out a questionnaire. Once littles were assigned, each Big got a plain white bag to decorate for their little and get them a gift to present them at the reveal. I got my little an old AZ tshirt, an AZ keychain, and some hand sanitizer. I also had a contest for "best decorated bag". The winner, Promy Tobassum, hand drew her entire bag!

All in all, it was a great evening filled with food, laughter, and memories to last a lifetime! 

 ​This past Saturday, Alpha Zeta pledge class volunteered with the UF Fisheries and Aquatics Faculty to put on the first Fishing for Success event this year. About 100 individuals came out, as families, to fish in local ponds together. The pledges of AZ cut up the hot dogs used as bait, proctored a casting contest, and registered several guests at this event. While there was time, some members even got to practice their own fishing skills. - Olivia Scruggs PC Service Chair

Las week the pledge class of the Florida Chapter Alpha Zeta wanted to show our love and graditue to the previous brothers and our campus by cleaning and polishing our AZ plaque. We gathered together and washed, scrubbed and polished the gold plaque on campus. While getting wet and dirty, we put in a lot of elbow grease in order for our history to shine into the future. We are planning on doing this again this semester, allowing it to shine even more. - Olivia Scruggs, Pledge Class Service Chair

See what Carson Cooper, a spring 2015 pledge, had to say about their potluck social!

"The new AZ pledges at UF were able to have a potluck game night at the clubhouse of an apartment complex. The best part was that older brothers came out and everyone got to enjoy pizza, Wii games, and best of all-twister. Here is a picture of an older brother, Taylor, dominating the twister game which she ultimately won. Socials are more fun when they include older brothers because it's an opportunity to get paddle signatures and find out more about why Alpha Zeta is so awesome to be a part of."

Florida chapter's new pledge class is super studious! Here is a picture of the pledges at their second study social. It was a great way to collaborate on homework and learning material while also getting to know each other and enjoying some donuts.

This Sunday the new Alpha Zeta pledges ran a concessions stand for Florida’s baseball team against Tennessee. Ten pledges volunteered which upgraded us to a bigger stand that typically sells more food and brings in more money. When the crowd wasn’t there, it was nice to socialize and bond with the brothers. It was also a great way for us to communicate by passing along orders and working together. Overall, we made quite a bit of money from our stand just with 10% back from sales and had a great time doing it. The baseball team won too! - Carson Cooper, PC Fundraising Chair

This past Saturday the new Alpha Zeta pledge class held a restaurant fundraiser at a local frozen yogurt vendor called Yogurtology. It was a great way for the pledge class to kick off fundraising because we got to eat super yummy fro-yo. If you went with brothers, it was nice to socialize while helping out our organization and if you went with non-AZ friends it was a great way to get them involved in supporting AZ! It was super easy to set up too—just try emailing local business to see if they’ll give you a percentage of their sales for one night. - Carson Cooper, PC Fundraising Chair

This semester I organized a scavenger hunt around campus for the pledges. At each station, they found brothers waiting to give them the next clue. The pledges split up into two teams, and the team that got back first got an extra hour to go in any category that they want (social, fundraising, or service). It was really fun organizing and seeing them all run around campus and working together to finish their hunt. Afterwards, we had a reflection time to discuss team-work and some challenges they may have faced. This was a great event that brought out the strengths of the pledges and allowed them to bond together while achieving a goal.

I like to start off the first couple of pledge meetings with an ice breaker. This ice breaker involves 2 items: post-it notes and a pen. I wrote a person, place or thing on the post-it note and placed it on the pledges forehead. They then had to go around and ask yes or no questions in order to figure out who/what they are. It was a great activity to get everyone up and moving!