Skull Smoker Fall 2013

The SKuLL

Fall Smoker 2013 Special Edition | September 28 2013 | aepks.com

ALPHA EPSILON OF PHI KAPPA SIGMA NEWSLETTER

EDITOR-IN- CHIEF

Fernando Mier (Upsilon)

Executive Board

David Burchell (Alpha) Patrick Kevin Schlomas (Beta) Benjamin David Grimmer (Pi) John D’Ortenzio (Iota) Martin Dillon (Sigma) Christopher King (Tau) Jihad A. Zeid (Delta)

Officers

William Mark Strnad (Theta 1) Richard Stevenson (Theta 2) Brian N Collins (Theta 3) Fernando F Mier (Psi) Dakota Betts (Phi) Richard Shepherd (Asst. Tau) Tyler Ryan Seppala (Asst. Tau) Elmar Okanovic (Rho) Collin Lee Dunn (Lambda) Kasey Klynstra (Epsilon) Fernando F Mier (UB Liaison) David Burchell (Greek Council) George Kim (Librarian) William Mark Strnad (Proposals) Hayden McDuffee (Judicial Board)

Other Active Members Evan James Austin Krishen Stewart Blows Brian N Collins Jason Nicholas DiBabbo Rishi Goomar Bryan Edwin Grant Troy Buenz Makulec Colin McQuone Josh Moser Mitchell Pollitt Peter George Zurowski Daniel “Copernicus” Fallon Lei Ling Alexander Jacobs Grayson Watson Antonio Hudson Chengyu Perry Zhang Dan Florescu William Fox Braden Senst

Resident Advisor

From the

Housing Corp. Desk Dear Brothers, My name is Michael Wright, and I have the pleasure of serving as President of the Alpha Epsilon of Phi Kappa Sigma Educational Society.

First, I want to thank all of the tireless efforts of our alumni members who have chosen to give back to our beloved Fraternity that has given us so much. While it is easy to leave out so many who have contributed, I want to make sure that I recognize the rest of the board – Alex Callow, Edward Chiem, Dylan Easley, Daniel Kelly, Sean McCann, Doug Opicka, David Polli, and Chuck Sticha; our Chapter Advisors – Leo Bassett and Gary Doman; our Faculty Advisor – Dr. John Twombly; and our Resident Advisor – Paul Orawiec.

The mission of our board remains what it has always been – to serve as an advisory committee to our Active Membership, ensure the Chapter House remains in good condition, and ultimately safeguard the undergraduate experience for present and future members. Recently, our role has expanded as administrators of the Carroll K. Simons Endowment Fund. It cannot be overstated how much Brother Simons’ generosity has helped Alpha Epsilon and the Fraternity as a whole.

Since the Carroll K. Simons Fund was bestowed to us in 2006, we have increased the overall principle amount, allocated over $850,000 in scholarships to Active Undergraduate Members, $250,000 in Chapter House improvements (including an exterior masonry project that is currently underway), $125,000 for textbooks, $50,000 for leadership and development programming, and pledged $75,000 to the International Fraternity for the formation of the Carroll K. Simons Institute. Whether contributing our time, talents, or financial resources, Brother Simons continues to serve as an example to us all in the advancement of our Fraternity.

Faculty Advisor

Lastly, I want to express how proud we are of the Active Members of the Alpha Epsilon Chapter. From consistent, values based recruitment and New-Member education, to excellent chapter and financial management; in reality, they make our jobs as advisors rather easy.

We look forward to another great academic year and an incredible Fall Smoker which welcomes the class of 1963!

Housing Corp.

Fraternally,

Paul Orawiec

Chapter Advisors Leo Bassett Gary Doman

Dr. John Twombly Alex Callow Edward Chiem Dylan Easley Daniel Kelly Sean McCann Doug Opicka David Polli Chuck Sticha Michael J. Wright

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Michael J. Wright AE 2005

A Message from the Chapter’s Alpha By: David “Chief” Burchell Brothers and friends,

I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have the chance to lead the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma during this period in the Chapter’s history. We are entering the coming year with a tremendous amount of momentum; winning last year’s Greek Week competition and Greek Council’s Chapter of the Year, a Chapter GPA that has continued to rise over the last year and a half, a steadily growing membership base, and after this summer an Estes Cup for financial excellence and Outstanding Chapter award for MCS performance are all successes that have given us a great opportunity for growth in the coming academic year.

Our work towards growing as a Chapter began several weeks ago as we held our fall retreat. There, we tackled issues concerning the Chapter and took a critical look at what we do well and what we need to improve. We came up with plans for the semester and created of checklist of things we wanted to see accomplished during the semester and year.

We strove to avoid the typical idea of “goal setting,” and instead framed our conversation in terms of what results we expect from ourselves by the end of the school term. Many of these were fairly typical, including items like “improve Chapter GPA” or “initiate 25 new members over the year.”

We tried to explore other areas of growth and betterment for our members outside of typical goals however, and came up with plans like having every member involved in a regular physical activity, building relationships with faculty and staff by bringing them to events like Smoker, increasing our leadership on campus by founding an intramural or club sport, and improving inter-Chapter relations by ensuring multiple Chapter visits during the semester. Overall, I am quite proud of the list we came up with; in my opinion it is the most ambitious and well-rounded set of initiatives I’ve seen in my 4 years with the Chapter. More importantly, I know that with the drive of our members we will accomplish them all and more during the coming year.

We did very well reaching out into the IIT student body, and it was obvious from day one that the Greek community at IIT has done a great job of advertising and representing ourselves on campus. The Skulls were able to capitalize on this strengthened relationship, and on Thursday, August 29th, we will be pinning a pledge class of X. I am very excited to see what these fresh faces can do for our organization, and I am sure under the tutelage of our current membership they will prove to be excellent gentlemen.

I am at once absolutely ecstatic and nervous to be president for the upcoming semester. There is a great deal of pressure to continue to push our Chapter along our path of excellence, but I am reassured every time I think about the ability and motivation of the members of Alpha Epsilon. They are an engine of success and determination, and I know the next semester is going to be a great one. I thank all of you for the support you continually show the Chapter, and I hope the IIT Skulls can continue to do well and make you and the entire international Fraternity proud of us.

Stellis Aequus Durando

Fraternally,

David Burchell

Continuing our successes at retreat, our fall rush period went very well. Brother Jihad “Flatline” Zeid headed up the planning and execution of the week, and it was an incredibly fun, sometimes exhausting, but overall very productive week.

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PHIKAPPASIGMA

A L P H A E P S I LO N “ T H E S K U L L” FA L L S M O K E R 2 0 1 3

Chapter of the Year

Trust Honor

Φ

moker

Respect

Κ Knowledge

GREEK WEEK CHAMPIONS

Wisdom Responsibility

Σ Integrity

A SUMMARY OF ALL WHAT WE DID THIS PREVIOUS 2012-2013 ACADEMIC YEAR AND MORE...

Welcome to Fall Smoker 2013!!!

The SKuLL

Introducing...

Online every other month at www.aepks.com

A new magazine from Phi Kaps to Phi Kaps

“The Skull” Alpha Epsilon Bi-Monthly Newsletter

By: Fernando Mier “Van Der Rohe” - Editor in Chief Feeling that the way we use to communicate with our alumni was not good enough is the main reason behind all of this.

During the academic year 2012 - 2013, summer 2013 and the begining of this Fall 2013, we won a lot of members, we made a lot of memories that we will never forget, we got crowned during Greek Week for the first time in a long time, and we were chosen

by HQ as Chapter of the Year. Many of our members earned awards from the school, the fraternity and other organizations, our GPA got better and we tried to improve our chapter in the best way possible.

| fmier@iit.edu

But I don’t think a lot of you knew about it. So now that I’ve taken over this position (as the Upsilon), I want to present to all of you “The Skull”, our award winning newsletter which is the new way that “we” the active brothers of the Alpha Epsilon of Phi Kappa Sigma will communicate with you, our dear alumni. And if you haven’t read our previous issue (Summer 2013), I want to tell you that this magazine gets published every other month and is my job to make sure this to happen.

And with this magazine I plan that you will be informed of what is happening in our chapter, and since it gets published every other month, we have time to gather enough information and make it relevant for you to read.

This edition that you’re holding right now, is our special printed version with the best articles of the semester and summer that will get published every smoker for now on. But If you don’t want to wait until Spring 2014 to get new updates, I invite you to visit www.aepks. com on November and every other month after that.

And without nothing else to say for the moment, I hope you enjoy reading this special edition of “The Skull”, and I encourage you to write articles for this new magazine (even if you’re an alumni) as the main reason of this newsletter to exist is to inform all members of “Alpha Epsilon” what our brothers are doing, and to connect with each other once again as a fraternity.

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Casino Night with the Skulls

We have new prospective members...

And this is how Rush Week Fall 2013 went By: Jihad “Flatline� Zeid As Recruitment Week comes to a close, we can finally take a breath and look back at our accomplishments throughout the last few days.

freshmen and other new guys began coming to events throughout the week, many of them stuck around and began to show interest in the fraternity and what it was all about.

The week started out with a bang on Saturday at the annual Taste of the Quad event hosted by all the fraternities and sororities on campus.

As the week came to a close, our biannual Bid Lunch came around in which we awarded twenty-two Bids to the new guys that showed the most interest and promise throughout the week.

Many new freshmen mingled and talked with the Brothers that invited them to the events we had planned for the rest of Recruitment Week; which included events such as a Bottomless Buffalo Wings Night and a Casino Night. As

Currently, it is looking like we will have roughly eighteen Bid acceptances for the Fall 2013 semester; which is very exciting to all the current Brothers. As the semester continues, we hope to retain all those that are interested in

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joining our Chapter by teaching them about our history and how we run the Chapter to keep it functioning smoothly.

With Pinning coming up the second Thursday of the semester, we hope to excite the new guys about the New Member Process and prepare them to be future Brothers our successful and history-rich organization.

Overall, Recruitment Week looked to be a successful week, and the Brothers enjoyed putting in the hard work to ensure that our Chapter will continue to grow in the future, both in quantity and quality.

was always alive with some form of nerdtastick thing going on. I loved it.

I also was classmates with quite a few brothers and never was I without someone to study with for the many exams I had during my pledge semester.

The house granted me easy access to textbooks, something I had not had since my freshman year and I spent a bit of time in the house library with my fellow CS classmates pondering why discrete math excited and how we could have it erased from existence if we willed it hard enough.

As the school year wound down more and more Brothers left for summer break.

I remember waking up one day and walking into the hall to find ever door on my hall open and every room empty. I wondered the halls a bit and found myself to be indeed all alone. I headed into the bathroom to brush my teeth when, out of one of the stalls, Brother Buttercup bursts out completely bear ass naked and runs to the showers. Apparently, he too thought he was completely alone in the house and made himself at home.

Members of the Spring Class of 2016 before getting initiated

And this is how I became a Phi Kap...

The many perks of pledging By: Antonio “Mutt� Hudson

Pledging was new and challenging experience for me. Spending long nights with my fellow -pledges learning the many ins and outs of the fraternity, trying to learn the many names of all the Brothers in the house, watching Brother Buttercup get yelled at multiple times a day for not wearing his pledge pin; these are all things I looked forward to on a daily basis.

When I moved to Chicago from Texas, I felt very out of my element. I did not have a place I could really call home.

Then I found the skull house. Over time,

I interacted with the vast spectrum of guys that spanned the house. I soon came to the conclusion that though the many people of the house were very different, they did all have one uniting characteristic in common, they all nerd out over something.

I loved walking the house and coming across everything from Magic the Gathering matches to League of Legend and Dota matches taking place back to back, massive hockey parties for the Blackhawks and groups watching others play and subsequently fail at Kerbal Space Program. Everyone had something that someone else loved to do and the house

Soon, even he left for home and as I only early morning classes, I was alone for most of the day until the few people who stayed during the summer returned from work. I missed the activities that I had become accustomed to seeing during the school year and soon became quite stir crazy. After a time, I took it upon myself to be the ruler of the kitchen! There were a few containers filled with items that had been left from April of the previous school year. By the time I found them buried in the back of the fridge it was July.

My favorite specimens were the bacon and eggs, it was like a Dr. Seuss book. The eggs had a lovely green fuzz to them but the bacon looked like they were made that morning.

I hung out with the Brothers who lived nearby, going to concerts and local clubs.

They always treated me as if they had known me for years. I felt like family. As Brothers started trickling back from their various vacations, the family grew. By the time of pinning, I no longer felt like I was just observing the Fraternity members I was their Brother and they were mine. I was home.

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Brother Fox at Hanford Site

We’re better Phi Kapps when we prepare for the future...

A Summer Away from Home... at a National Lab By: William “Spambot” Fox This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to work for the Department of Energy at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Site Office.

While at the office I was able to work closely with the individuals who regulate the capabilities of the national lab and provide over site of the Lab and its facilities. The office was located in the state of Washington and, with the new location and great people I was working with, I had the the chance to go on some great adventures. I was able to explore the peaks of several mountains, including 7 | AEPKS.COM Fall Smoker 2013

mount St. Helen’s, and Mount Ranier.

I participated in my first Ultimate Frisbee Tournament and biked over a 1000 miles during my stay in the area. On a more pertinent side to my future, I was able to become acquainted with some of the most advanced electron microscopes in the world and found myself being able to ask leading scientists questions about their work providing insight into potential careers in my future.

The experience was enlightening and entirely beneficial towards my future.

One of the many reasons that I joined Phi Kappa Sigma was so that I could be surrounded by uniquely motivated and

agreeable individuals. Even though I was not around anyone from my Fraternity, I was still able to find my fair share of “brothers” in the area. A fellow Brother and Alumni, Josh, that I met at Men of Honor nearly two years ago and found again at Grand Chapter put it best: “There are a lot of Phi Kaps out there, they just don’t know it yet.”

Much of what has developed concerning my life in the last several months would never have happened if I was not part of Phi Kappa Sigma, and for that I thank all of my Brothers and the Alumni that have made our organization what it is today.

to help them discover and realize their full potential. We have several events planned for this relationship; they include at least two fundraisers as well as an immersion day.

At this immersion day students from all over Chicago can come to IIT’s campus and be able to explore the different things that are going on here. Different demonstration and hands on activities will play a vital role in the event. There will be two different days planned, one in the spring and fall respectively, and they will be aimed at different groups. One day will focus on younger elementary aged students. This day will introduce basic concepts in science and try to get the kids interested in science at a young age. The second day will be tailored for high school students and will focus on different careers that are available from a STEM based education.

Members of IIT’s Greek Council on the AFLV Conference

We become better brothers

As we get involved on campus By: Richard “Loki” Stevenson The Greek Council at the IIT serves as the governing body for the Fraternities and Sororities on campus.

This past semester I was elected to serve as the Council’s Vice President of Philanthropy. This is a new position and therefore there were many challenges going into it. The main one being that I had no idea if what I was doing was correct. This semester I focused on building the position and exploring different directions in which the position could expand to. As I met with the Greek Council Executive Board and the Philanthropy Committee, one thing was apparent, that in order to build and foster community, it is necessary to

give back to the community that we call home. One of the first things that I set out to do was to establish a relationship with a local charity which would become an ‘Official Philanthropy’. Lynne Meyer from the IIT’s office of Service Learning provided many different suggestions.

The top priority to me was that the organization be focused on education, specifically and education that would one day lead to a STEM career path.

After weighing many options we chose the Chicago Youth Centers (CYC). CYC provides afterschool programs to students in many different neighborhoods in the city. Chicago Youth Centers invests in youth in underserved communities in Chicago

This semester I also had the opportunity to serve on the planning committee of Relay for Life of IIT. Relay for Life is the American Cancer Society’s largest and most successful fundraising effort. This is the second year that IIT has hosted an event and we nearly doubled the amount of money raised from the year prior.

The 12 hour event was hosted at Man on a Bench park as well as Hermann Hall and featured live bands, games, prizes, and a memorable Luminaria ceremony in which the participants remembered those who have fallen due to cancer.

IIT students raised $8779.85 this year for the American Cancer Society. This money will be used to fund cancer research and prevention programs, as well as programs for people fighting the disease currently. It is not too late to donate; donations can be made at relayforlife.org/miniiitil and donate to the Skull House team.

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Greek Week Dance Off

Brotherhood is more than skin deep...

And is how we won Greek Week 2013 By: Krishen “Afro Ninja” Blows This year, Alpha Epsilon chapter decided that it was about time that we had our turn in the spotlight.

With the Sig Eps gone, when better to take back our rightful place on top? So, when greek week came, we banded together to win.

For our theme, we decided to be patriotic and go with Seal Team Six. We were off to a rough start, as even though Greek council tweeted about how funny our skit was, we didn’t score particularly highly in any of the opening events.

However, we came together in a nigh-

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inspirational fashion as a chapter, and continued to score highly on the athletic events and had a lot of fun preparing our dance off, until we were neck and neck with Kappa Phi Delta.

While it was penny wars that decided our victory, our most memorable greek week success came in the form of a cake helicopter. Yes, you read that right, a cake helicopter.

David Burchell sculpted a helicopter from pound cake, and we mounted it on a frame so that it hung about our display for cupcake wars, with rotating blades made of lego.

We were crowned greek week champions at the end of the week, and it will most definitely be the first of many victories to come.

USA. USA. USA.

Unfortunately, we had to cut short our visit because we still had a while to travel and wanted to get to Delta Pi before the end of the night!

After driving another two hours through the winding and beautiful Indiana countryside we finally arrived at Bloomington! It didn’t take us long to find our way down Jordan Street to our chapter house.

Again, we were warmly greeted by the brothers who were at that time hanging out on their so called ‘fratio’.

They were an amazing group of guys who I am proud to call my brothers.

They showed us around their house on the first night, got us introduced to their members and prospective new members. The weekend ended after we got to walk around Bloomington and get to know the campus. We are definitely planning on visiting our brothers down at Delta Pi chapter again!

Brothers of Delta Pi and Alpha Epsilon together

Our visit to

Delta Pi (and Alpha Xi) Chapter By: Braden “Skullcandy” Senst Recently a couple of brothers and I decided to go visit Delta Pi chapter down at Indiana University.

On the way down we realized that we had to pass right through West Lafayette, home of Purdue University and our own Alpha Xi chapter. Of course we decided to drop on by; unfortunately it was unannounced.

We were given a tour of the house and were able to spend about an hour and a half with the brothers of Alpha Xi chapter. They were kind enough to take time out of their days to show us around their house and allow us to meander through their house at will.

It was, and always is, a fantastic experience to be able to show up on the doorstep to a chapter house and be greeted warmly by fellow Phi Kaps!

It has always made me proud, as a Phi Kap; that every time I have visited a chapter, announced or otherwise, I have always been greeted with the warm welcome of brotherhood. It’s amazing to me that whenever I walk on to a campus with a chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma I am able to find a group of men that in my experience always feel like the oldest of friends, even if we had just met.

I suppose that’s the great thing about our brotherhood; that we don’t recruit men for superficial reasons, but instead for their values and their true qualities. In closing I would like to thank the brothers of all of the chapters who have hosted me in the past; especially Delta Pi and Alpha Xi, who so graciously shared their houses with some of our brothers from Alpha Epsilon on our travels!

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Brothers from different chapters at CSI

Picture to be updated with a High Res version before printing The craziest week of my sumer...

From Leo Burnett Chicago to CSI and back!

By: Fernando Mier “Van Der Rohe” During the previous edition of “The Skull” I mentioned my plans to teach our brothers from other chapters about how to better advertise the fraternity at their school.

Still the week of August 1st was probably one of the craziest weeks I spent this summer. And is all because I got really involved at the 78th anniversary of the company I work for, and since I’m a little distracted, I didn’t notice that both things were the same weekend.

So while early on the week I was preparing to produce one of the biggest parties Chicago had ever seen, I had the 11 | AEPKS.COM Fall Smoker 2013

Phi Kap commitment to teach and train our fellow brothers that weekend.

So I packed all my stuff, polished my presentation the weeks before, talked and plan my trip for hours with our amazing brother Kristof Nerl and in less than 48 hours I traveled from Chicago, to Cincinnati, to Woodland Lakes Retreat Center and back again.

And I couldn’t done this without the help of people like Tim Schug (IIT), Jack Kulpchack (Carthage), Kevin Shannon (George Mason), Mark Logsdon (North Texas), Maxwell Fugere (VCU), and more. All Phi Kaps that I met at this event (except from Tim) and that made

my short stay really memorable to the point that it showed me one of the many reasons I loved our fraternity the way I do.

So even if I can’t talk a lot about CSI since I was there for a really short period of time, I must say that everyone was anxious to learn everything I prepared.

The brotherhood feeling was present at all time and it makes me happy to go online and find that people are using the tools I teach them in their chapters.

So even if a less than 48 hours trip sounds ridiculous for a lot of people, I want to say that for me it was a great experience, and I can’t way for the next CSI to come in order to enjoy it for real.

In between tug-of-war, orienteering and Jeopardy laid the heart of CSI, a dozen lectures in Chapter operations including budgeting, marketing, recruitment and beyond. Admittedly, with Alpha Epsilon’s century-plus track record of awards and accolades, it was a challenge for me to not pull up in Ohio with a big head. To say I was humbled by UW-Madison’s strong alumni relationship, VCU’s superior philanthropic efforts and NYU’s social media mastery, however, comes as both an understatement and a pleasure. We at Alpha Epsilon do very, very well, but what point would there have been to the trip if there was nothing we could do to improve?

Brothers helping eachother to solve one of the challenges at CSI

The Carroll K. Simons Institute:

A review of this new tradition By: Patrick “Casus Somnus” Schlomas “First place in learning” were the words that sprung to mind as our small group salvaged the first team challenge of the weekend -- to flip over a towel as we all stood upon it.

With that remark I felt I understood why I had come 300 miles to Phi Kappa Sigma’s very first Carroll K. Simons Institute in Amelia, Ohio.

A gung-ho first attempt at linen flipping was indistinguishable from a blindfolded game of Twister: a pretzel

of brotherhood and the sunny-side-up rug that remained begged a do-over. We needed only a few seconds to step back and think our task over, and I couldn’t tell you whether our second attempt was more time spent in planning or in execution.

It’s hard to say what I learned that weekend. The tools have been handed to us and the time has only just begun to use them. Our Chapter won’t always flip the towel on the first try, but there is something to be taken away from every experience, from every brother.

I never knew Brother Simons myself, but the unwavering love he had for this Fraternity could be seen in those that did, shared with those that didn’t, and felt throughout the entirety of the time we spent together.

Nothing would make me happier than to see the Carroll K. Simons Institute, an experience worthy of the man’s name, reach out to more brothers in the years to come. What a great time it is to be a Phi Kap!

Take two was much kinder to us, not in the stopwatch sense (we were still dead last for time), but already we could see how we would have to approach later challenges, not solely for our time together but for the upcoming year within our respective Chapters.

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The Fall 2013 Pi Plan:

Lets make our grades, GPA and Fraternity improve By: Benjamin “Faramir” Grimmer There is nothing worst that putting in provation some of our members, but as the Pi is my responsability to bring the situation back to control.

Last semester we had three brothers placed on suspension due to consist poor academic performance. These brothers had there second consecutive semester with a GPA less than our Chapter’s requirement (< 2.500). Our Chapter is taking this matter seriously and working to ensure we don’t have to place any more brothers on suspension for grades.

During our Fall 2013 Chapter Retreat, we discussed what steps our Chapter needs to take academically. Our Chapter came to the agreement on a couple approaches to improving our house’s academic environment. The main way we can improve is by making 13 | AEPKS.COM Fall Smoker 2013

an atmosphere in the house that is conducive to studying. This requires a culture change in the house where Brothers actively offer help to each other and seek help when they need it.

In this coming semester, we are trying to achieve this culture change by keeping academics as a consistent part of our Chapter’s discussions. During our house meetings this semester, each brother will be asked to give a brief update on their current wellness academically and in general. Hopefully this will help facilitate brothers finding any help they need. In addition to this, we will be emphasizing the importance of good scholarship in New Member Education.

This should start to transform the Chapter in the same way that valuebased recruitment has made us more aware of our core values. New Brothers will have a strong understanding of the importance of good scholarship to the

well-being and image of our Chapter.

Another issue that came up from our Chapter discussion on our grade policy was that many brothers don’t understand our academic By-Laws. This is largely due to the level of complexity that has developed in them over years of changes and amendments. To resolve this problem, we will be have our ByLaws committee rewrite our Academic Policy in a way that closely follows the Constitution and Acts of Phi Kappa Sigma. Once By-Laws are simplified, Brothers will have a clear idea of what the minimum requirements are and can avoid falling below them.

Although it is never good to lose active Brothers due to grades, this has served as a wake up call to the Chapter. We are starting this semester with a focus on achieving good scholarship and encouraging each other to do the same.

Members and their Pledge Fathers will go on the Pledge Father-Pledge Son Retreat where they will learn the basics of team-building, Brotherhood-building, conflict resolution, and recruitment tactics.

Having the Pledge Fathers present will aid in the New Members’ “breadth of training”because the Pledge Fathers can relay their own experiences as learning tools.

We hope to show these New Members that no Brother is expected to be perfect, but that he is expected to strive to be better constantly.

We also plan to exemplify the Core Values and lead by example in hopes that the New Members will follow our lead and uphold the standards of the Fraternity.

Keeping the Phi Kapp tradition on campus is our #1 priority

The new members are here...

Let the Phi Kap games begin!

By: Collin “Bucky” Dunn

With the semester getting off to a very quick start and being filled with numerous activities, the time has come yet again for the pinning of this semester’s New Members.

This pinning ceremony will begin their eight-week New Member Education Program, and it is sure to be the begining of a a very productive and educational period for them.

The New Member Education Program extends far beyond that eight-week

period, though; it persists throughout the New Members’ lifelong growth as Brothers. We, the New Member Educator and New Member Mentor, hope to instill this idea into the New Members to show them that, even though we are leading the Program, we don’t have all the answers and don’t claim to.

We also hope to simulate what Chapter meetings will be like by having the New Members elect Pledge Class officers and run through their Pledge Class meetings once a week during the Education Program.

Doing this, we will facilitate their using conflict resolution and the basics of Robert’s Rules of Order in order to prepare them for the actual Chapter meetings.

All in all, we’re very much looking forward to this semester and working to develop some potentially great Phi Kaps.

Encouragement of this lifelong growth and development, not only as Brothers, but as Men of Honor, is a lesson from which they will benefit greatly. At some point during the eight weeks, the New AEPKS.COM Fall Smoker 2013 | 14

Help us to complete AE Family Tree

Alpha Epsilon needs your help...

And update on “Tracing back our Phi Kapp “Family Tree”” by: Daniel “Twerp” Fallon aka “Copernicus” So I had the idea to put together a pledge family tree very early on. The day after pinning, I was hanging out with some brothers and we were invited over to triangle to hang out and smoke.

While we were down there, (For the record their basement is really cool) I saw something interesting on one of the larger walls. It was a family tree of all of the pledge fathers and pledge sons. I always thought that was cool, and after noticing that we barely even kept track, I decided to take it upon myself to play genealogist.

My initial goal was to track every active member’s lineage back to the 4 brothers 15 | AEPKS.COM Fall Smoker 2013

that were living in the house back in 1998 (shortly after we became a dry fraternity). I have gotten very close to that and am lacking only small amounts of information to tie the remaining stray trees together. I have currently compressed all brothers down to about 5 trees.

The tops of my trees currently are as follows - Benjamin Brink (2002) - Adam Dybek (1997)

Seeing how successful I have been at working backwards, my goal going forward is to fill in the branches headed down the tree (IE finding missing pledge sons, and fleshing out dead lines). I plan to have printouts of these available during Smoker on this September.

I’m going to post the current trees here:

http://goo.gl/BLqD7u

- Anthony Difiglio 2000

If you have any information about the trees (particularly brother names or missing pledge sons) you can email me at:

- David Muliere (2002)

copernicus@hawk.iit.edu

- Tom Shea (Pledge Class Year?)

The Brothers of the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma cordially invite all of our alumni to join us in our annual Spring Smoker

Smoker Spring 2014

RSVP Information coming soon

If you have any questions, feel free to email our alumni relations chair, at Smoker fmier@iit.edu AEPKS.COM Fall 2013 | 16

Congratulations

NEW ALUMNI!!!

A few info about those who graduated this spring 2013 and are already changing and taking over the world.

“Animal”

David Thor Biedrzycki Started his fraternal career as the Social Chair for his pledge class and the following semester, served as the Psi for the Chapter. He then served as Vice President for two semesters, took a semester break and then served as the Chapter Alpha President. Finally he served one semester as the Epsilon. During this time, he also served as a Leadership Academy Scholar, KIEA scholar, and helped found IIT’s Association of Computing and Machinery chapter and served as its President for two semesters. He is currently working with what he loves as a Software Engineer at kCura, a Chicago based litigation software firm as well as two side projects, MonkeyBars (a start-up dedicated to creating a better developer community starting in Chicago) and Open Source Construction (a start-up dedicated to helping developing countries by creating a place where users can openly share construction ideas and plans with others across the globe).

“Bear”

Kent Burlingame Graduated from Computer Science and now is heading to Seattle for a job at Microsoft; Kent plan is to eventually continue education in CS, likely at University of Washington. During his year as undergrad, he was involved in our fraternity as the Kitchen Manager, Secretary, Vice President, and most recently President (Fall 2012). He was also part of Tau Beta Pi and the Association for Computing Machinery.

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“Prius”

Tom B Folta Is a recent college of architecture graduate who completed school with a specialization in digital design and minors in software engineering and business. In school he participated in the Camras scholarship society as well as several other student organizations such as SGA. Throughout the semester he interned at Nokia and will soon be starting as a full time software engineer there after concluding a backpacking trip in Europe.

“Pledge”

Anthony Knuckey Graduated from Stuart School of Business and served in the fraternity in several positions (Upsilon, Psi, etc... ) during his undergrad years. Tony has a high interest in finance and for this reason he was really involved in our school Finance Board allocating money collected through the SAF to different student orgs. His intimidate plans are to continue his education in business perusing a finance degree “Garmin”

Michael LeResche Just graduated as a double major in Mechanical and Materials Science Engineering and has a research background in thermodynamics.

Mike served in several positions on our fraternity as was involved with Ultimate Frisbee. His plan is to find a job where he could utilize his school background and unique work experiences.

“Van Der Rohe”

Fernando Mier Is currently a MAC / MBA student that graduated from architecture at IIT. During his time on the Fraternity he served as our Social Chair and now as our Upsilon. During his undergrad Fernando was heavily involved with Union Board, SGA, AIAs and AIGA, as well as being the President and Founder of Lights, Camera Action!!! IIT’s Movie Club. He’s a proud owner of a Stryker Award for Student Service and is happy that since he’s staying on gradschool at IIT he’ll be able to being active on the chapter for a little bit more.

“Pickaxe”

Ryan Miller Just graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Armour College of Engineering.

He served as the Sports Chairman(Rho) and on the executive board as Recruitment Chairmen(Delta) each for two semesters. He also led the construction of the new push cart for Greek Week with the help of others in the Chapter.

His plans are to remain in the Chicagoland area for job searching and staying involved with the Chapter.

“Speedy”

Vince R Poczekaj Our Spring 2013 Alpha, just graduated as an Architectual Historian from IIT. During his years as an undergrad Vince was heavily involved with the fraternity and several other student orgs like New Velocity, Greek Council and Union Board

where he served as the VP of the BOG during the 2011 - 2012 academic year. His plans are to remain in Chicago for job searching and eventually going to gradschool.

“Capo”

Mikie Smit Graduated in December 2012, and has since been working as an architectural designer at Elements Architectural Group in Oak Park.

More importantly however, He is getting married this summer to the Beautiful Michelle Davidson, whom he met in Architecture School. They just bought a house in Homer Glen, and plan on inviting the Chapter over when they get back from their honeymoon. During his time in the Chapter, Mikie Served as Lambda Extraordinaire. Mikie and Michelle also founded and run a non-profit organization together designing and building for families and communities in need in the developing world.

“Bob el Constructor”

Ryan Sutton

Graduated from architecture and served as our chapter Secretary, the Bylaws Chair, a member of the Judicial Board and the New Member Educator for a year. During his years of college he was also heavily involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF or IV). And in the Spring of 2012 Ryan left IIT to live in India for 6 months and participate in a non-profit architecture internship with an organization called Engineering Ministries International representing Phi Kappa Sigma internationally.

Brother Tom Folta during Graduation

Brothers Kent Burlingame and Dave Biedrzycki with their Diplomas

Brothers Elmar Okanovic, Troy Makulec and Roman Zwarycz after our latest Pinning

Brother Kasey Klynstra with some sisters from Kappa Phi Delta

Closing Remarks Skulls Gallery 2012 - 2013

We want to thank all of our alumni because without you none of this would be possible. I hope you enjoy this issue of “The Skull” and read the next volume on November.

- Fernando Mier

Brothers at IIT’s Spring Formal 2013 Brother Ryan Sutton and Gwen Parker during Graduation

Brother Mike Sm it and Michelle Davidson durin g Graduation

Brother Fernando Mier and Yoetzin Diaz during Graduation

Brothers during a Fall Rush Week 2013 event

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Brother Mike Sm it and Michelle Davidson durin g Graduation

Brother Ryan Sutton and Gwen Parker during Graduation

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Brother Mike Sm it and Michelle Davidson durin g Graduation

Brother Ryan Sutton and Gwen Parker during Graduation

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Brother Mike Sm it and Michelle Davidson durin g Graduation

Brother Ryan Sutton and Gwen Parker during Graduation

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Brother Mike Sm it and Michelle Davidson durin g Graduation

Brother Ryan Sutton and Gwen Parker during Graduation

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