8 minute read
Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform
Stevan Veldkamp, Ed.D.
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Hazing tragedies of the last two years have left campuses and headquarters in a quandary as to what policies and practices will create safe, successful, and sustainable fraternities and sororities. Questions about campus staffing ratios, recruitment policies, and effective anti-hazing prevention loom in the thoughts of student affairs professionals, university presidents, and trustees.
These practice and policy questions are just a few examples of the compelling matters Penn State’s Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform (Piazza Center) is poised to address to inform professional practice. In January 2019, the multidisciplinary research center was named in memory of Timothy J. Piazza, a sophomore at Penn State who died in February 2017 following alcohol-infused hazing activities.
A New Center
Since 2017, Penn State has undertaken a series of aggressive measures to overcome challenges in its Greek-letter community related to hazing, misuse of alcohol, sexual assault, and overly large and disruptive social events. The Piazza Center extends local efforts by providing the scholarship required to study and learn from common reform actions such as deferred recruitment, as well as develop and manage a national scorecard on fraternities and sororities, host national conversations on important and pressing topics, collect and distribute best practices, and sponsor original research to inform fraternity and sorority professionals’ advising practice. The Piazza Center is primed to create unbiased answers to perennial questions regarding professional practice and policies.
“Our aim is to make the center a valuable resource for colleges and universities across the United States, as well as for members, chapters, and organizations. The center will focus on research to support positive educational outcomes, student safety, and the reduction of highrisk behaviors. What everyone in this field really seeks is sound, professional practices,” said Damon Sims, Vice President for Student Affairs and a primary advocate for creation of the center at Penn State. “The Piazza Center will study best practices in creating safer chapters, as well as the positive impact fraternity and sororities can create on campus and in the community.”
An Old Idea
This new center builds upon the Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research, located at Indiana University in Bloomington since 1979 and transitioned to Penn State in 2019. This transition allows for dedication of full-time staff and resources to develop best practices in fraternity and sorority life. Penn State’s trustee and presidential leadership chose to pick up the mantle of finding grounded practices to enduring and contemporary challenges, and surfacing opportunities facing fraternities and sororities. After Piazza’s tragic death, university administrators were determined to fix the serious lack of research available to inform how fraternity and sorority affairs should most effectively operate and guide decisions on policies proven to work. Proposed by Penn State President Eric J. Barron and Vice President for Student Affairs Sims, 34 university trustees voted unanimously to support the creation and funding for the research center (see Penn State’s Commitment to Funding Fraternity and Sorority Research).
The idea of a fraternity and sorority research center goes back more than 44 years. In 1975, higher education and fraternal leaders convened with a goal to create a national agenda for fraternities and sororities. Indiana University Chancellor Herman Wells, Dean of Students Robert Shaffer, and a commission of well-known names in the higher education and interfraternal world led the effort. The agenda, speeches, and subsequent book created a pathway for the future of the American college fraternity (and sorority) on nearly the exact date of the 200-year founding of Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity. The proceedings included a call for the creation of a fraternity and sorority research center.
As a result, the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity was created to bridge the gap between espoused expectations and 1970s student behavior. However, the funding model was inconsistent and not adequate for such a heavy task, and the center continued with limited to moderate success. Forward-thinking campus and interfraternal leaders kept pushing for a research agenda to help inform their operations. The names of those involved read like a “Who’s Who” of campus and fraternity and sorority leadership, too many to list here — but most are honored by their campuses and headquarters.
What is Different Now?
There are numerous studies related to the size, shape, and extent of problems facing fraternities and sororities. However, there is little evidence related to professional practice in working with Greek-life organizations or in effective operations of these organizations. Learning how institutions move from identifying problems to creating chapter, community, and cultural change internally and externally is critical to the future of fraternity and sorority life.
The Piazza Center seeks to build upon — and amplify — professional practice that changes the hearts and minds of students, alumni, campuses, and headquarters by studying the efficacy of different methods to advise chapters; impact of changes to campus policies; and implementation of educational programs designed to create change. The Piazza Center strives to learn about professional practice that positively shifts student behavior and chapter cultures, and will determine how institutions can replicate that work.
The Piazza Center will not only disseminate discovered best practices, but also consult with professionals to help implement needed change. As an example, the National Scorecard is an accountability process for campuses and headquarters to gauge progress and benchmark against peers. The scorecard is meant for various chapters to inform on key metrics such as grade point average, community service, and violations of codes of conduct. Piazza Center staff have guided institutions in creating their own campus scorecards (See National Fraternity and Sorority Scorecard).
What will the Piazza Center do?
The Piazza Center is committed to the study of fraternity and sorority life, focusing on research to support positive educational outcomes, student safety, and reduction of high-risk behaviors. Specifically, the Piazza Center examines sound professional practice in fraternity and sorority advising and the impact of policy implementation. Further, the Piazza Center is committed to working toward:
Transformation of fraternity and sorority life: The research, tools, and best practices produced by the Piazza Center will help professionals enhance student safety and create transformative experiences. This will ultimately lead to sustainable chapters, which positively impact the campus and surrounding communities. One such strategy is providing support to equip campuses and headquarters with data from the Fraternity & Sorority Experience Survey (FSES). The FSES provides insight about academic experiences, values, social issues, bystander intervention, chapter operations, and community found in members’ experiences. Data collected and presented in the FSES summary report provides a perceptual overview of individual behaviors and chapter cultures. Participating institutions and headquarters can use the data to create chapter and council benchmarks. The FSES report can also inform critical decisions on where to focus program and advising support to create healthier and safer chapters and communities. Gamma Phi Beta Sorority currently incorporates data in conversations with local chapters to choose which programmatic areas to emphasize, replacing their satisfaction survey with the FSES. Further findings from the FSES and other research projects will inform campuses, organizations, and legislatures on how to institute comprehensive professional practices and change. The Piazza Center will host an annual symposium designed to bring together universities, organizations, researchers, and policymakers to better understand and address the reality of the current fraternity and sorority environment.
Share findings: The Piazza Center encourages collaboration to develop best practices and policies for fraternities and sororities. This cooperative approach allows for universities and organizations to learn from one another, while enabling researchers to collectively compare, track, measure, and analyze potential solutions to the longstanding challenges within this unique student organization experience. The National Fraternity and Sorority Scorecard is just one example and the first exploratory study of uniform consequences and accountability for campuses and inter/national headquarters.
Thinking critically: The Piazza Center takes a multidisciplinary approach to create sound professional practice. As a result, studies are comprehensive and review all existing literature, with value placed upon multiple points of view and approaches to the complex issues facing fraternities and sororities.
Penn State and the Piazza Center have a goal to raise $8 million to endow the critical work that must be done to create the elusive framework for professional practice. This financial infusion provides the center with fiscal resources to hire the staff needed to support existing projects and offer resources to launch new studies to benefit fraternity and sorority life. The university is approaching alumni, parents, corporations, headquarters, and foundations for gifts that benefit fraternity and sorority research, while building upon Penn State’s ongoing initiatives to reduce unsafe behaviors and increase accountability within fraternities and sororities. With overall costs to create the center estimated at $8 million, Penn State University has committed $2 million in initial funding as well as pledging up to $3 million in 1:1 matching funds for donor endowed gifts of $50,000 or more. Through this opportunity, alumni, parents, foundations, and friends can leverage their gifts to secure matching funds that double the impact of their generosity. Contact Stevan Veldkamp, executive director of the Piazza Center, at sjv54@psu.edu if your campus, council, or organization is interested in a gift to the Piazza Center.
For more information about the Piazza Center email PiazzaCenter@psu.edu or visit https://studentaffairs.psu.edu/piazzacenter
Dr. Stevan Veldkamp is the special assistant to the vice president for student affairs and executive director of the Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform at Penn State University. The Piazza Center is a national multidisciplinary research center that aims to provide actionable evidence to practitioners to improve the safety and experience of fraternity and sorority members. Veldkamp has served in senior student affairs roles at Indiana University Bloomington and is a frequent campus consultant.
