Date of Award

1995

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Leadership Studies

Abstract

In order to teach brothers how to be good mentors and leaders, the Fraternity has begun to offer a one-day retreat called a Regional mentor Development Program (RMDP), attendance to which is an expectation of the Epsilon/Brother Mentor Challenge. All members of the Fraternity are encouraged to attend these workshops regardless of the Challenge they are presently completing. As of January 1995, when I temporarily joined the organization, only one RMDP had been facilitated. It was held October 29, 1994 in the midwest region and serves as a guide on which the next RMDPs will be based. The program involved three separate 'tracks', one for members of each Challenge. Each of these tracks contained information pertinent to the participants' current level, but only individuals in the Epsilon/Brother Mentor Challenge learned about mentoring. The RMDP closed with a community service project in which all participants took part.

Planning these RMDPs can be divided generally into a two-stage process. The first two months of this project is supposed to involve contacting chapters that will host the RMDPs, alumni who will facilitate the workshop in their area, and local chapters that will attend the workshop in their region. After much of the logistics are taken care of, the next two months involves putting together materials to be sent out to facilitators for the various tracks of the workshop. While various topics such as confrontation skills, alcohol/drug programming, fraternity history, gender issues, and etiquette had been discussed in the various tracks of the first RMDP, one idea we generated was to delete the separate tracks and to hold one program. The old program set-up only taught mentoring skills to Epsilon/Brother Mentor Challenge members, so it seemed foolish to invite brothers from the Sigma and Phi Challenges to a "mentor" development program and then teach them about anything but mentoring. Also, since brothers can fulfill their expectation of attending a RMDP during any Challenge, they really should be receiving the training in mentoring. Thus, one of the major changes in the program seems only logical: to focus solely on mentoring in a RMDP.

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