The term for the 2001-2002 officers is coming to a close.  New elections will be held at the upcoming regional convention.  On behalf of all regional officers, I would like to extend my thanks to the region for giving us the great experience of serving the region in this unique capacity.  I want to wish you all well, and hope that the excellence we strive for in Phi Theta Kappa follows all of you in your future works.

Sincerely,

Doug Murphy

2001-2002 Newsletter Coordinator

Above, from left to right: Doug Murphy, Penny Tyler, Lizz Harris, Jessica Myers, and Jenni Maynor.

This is an opportunity to share with you a little about myself and to let you know how excited I am to be working with everyone in this very special year.

First of all let me thank the terrific people from Motlow Community College who were so sweet and hospitable way back when this wild and wonderful journey began for me. Some of you may remember from that time that I was born in Brazil, and grew up in Mexico City. My family and I came to live in the states when I was 15. After that lived in several of our united states: Colorado, California, New York, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. I came to Tennessee over six years ago and fell in love with its beauty and its people (I met my sweet hubby and married him in 1998).

My major at Cleveland State is Art. I am presently pursuing an Associates degree to be followed by a Bachelor’s in Fine Art and a Master’s. My goal is to be certified in Art Therapy.

The opportunity to become a part of the world of Phi Theta Kappa has been awe-inspiring. It has been my pleasure and honor to serve as your regional president. I want to be available to all Tennessee chapters in any way I can be in this exciting year when it will be our privilege to host International Convention 2002 in Nashville. It will be a most memorable event for us to be sure, and we will have a lot of fun working together. The Virginia, Alabama and Kentucky regions have graciously offered their assistance for the formidable endeavor in April, we will really need and appreciate you all. Opryland is certainly a point of Tennessee pride and having Kappans from throughout the country and beyond come here will be fantastic! We’ll show them a real good time, wont we?

Leadership Conference is approaching. I hope to have the pleasure of meeting many more Tennessee region Kappans in Maryville, July 20 & 21.

My name is Jessica Myers. I am your East Tennessee Vice President for 2001-2002. I was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa just a few months ago, yet I believe that I am well prepared for the year to come. I am a sophomore at Cleveland State Community College. I am pursuing an Associates degree in Elementary Education with plans of transferring to a senior institution in Fall 2002 to complete my Bachelors degree in the same area. I feel so honored to have been chosen to represent Tennessee as a regional officer. In the last few months, Phi Theta Kappa has become a very large part of my life. Outside of Phi Theta Kappa my interests include Student Hosts, a part time job at a fireworks store, reading, and spending time working with children. I hope to be able to meet many Phi Theta Kappans over the next year and to be able to help you in any way possible. If you need anything or just want to talk about Phi Theta Kappa you can e-mail me at jbrookie82@yahoo.com. Hope to hear from you soon.

Penny Tyler - West Vice President

July 20

Hello! My name is Penny Tyler. I live in Nashville, Tennessee and attend Nashville State Technical Institute. I am pursuing a degree in Visual Communication with an emphasis on Graphic Design. Currently, I hold the office of Secretary for the Alpha Xi Psi Chapter. Reading, gardening, and chatting online are a few of my interests. I am married and we are expecting our first child, a son, in November.

I am honored to serve as your Tennessee Regional Western Vice President. Your regional officers are excited about the upcoming year. We have our work cut out for us particularly since our region is hosting the International Convention in Nashville April 4-6, 2002.

My goal for Western Tennessee is to personally provide support to get the western chapters more involved in Phi Theta Kappa. I plan to visit and establish direct communication with many western chapters. I am anxious to serve and look forward to meeting you fellow Phi Theta Kappans

Jenni Maynor - Secretary

July 20

First things first. I just want to say thank you to all the members of the region for giving me the great opportunity to serve you as Regional Secretary. I find it both an honor and a pleasure. I am currently a sophomore at Hiwassee College where I am majoring in Agricultural Business. I was born and raised in a small farming community in McMinn County. I like to hike, swim, relax with friends, and I enjoy working with agriculture. I plan to graduate Hiwassee this spring with an Associate of Science Degree.

I feel that the upcoming year has many great things in store for Phi Theta Kappa. We will have the distinct honor of hosting the International Convention, which means as members we will all have to work hard together to pull it off smoothly. I am excited about the opportunity this will offer me to work with chapters across the state. I hope that throughout the year I will meet many of you. Please feel free to call on me during the year to visit for a meeting, inductions, or other events that your chapter hosts. Once again, thank you for your support, and please let me know if I can help you as a member or chapter have a better year in any way.

Doug Murphy - Newsletter Coordinator

August 3

Well, I registered for classes.  18 credit hours -  that's more than I've ever taken before, and a far cry from my usual 12 credit hour complement.  Actually, only 12 of those hours are classes I need - I'm taking a leadership course on Thursday because the idea of leadership isn't an abstract concept since I joined Phi Theta Kappa.  The other 3 hours are from a south in film and literature course.  I'm majoring in computer science, but my strongest areas are literature and history so I tend to take a lot of those courses (how do you think I got invited into PTK =)?  We'll see how it goes!  Hey, now I know how to make this entry PTK related - ahem....

Newsletter Editor Enrolled for Fall Semester

Doug Murphy taking 18 hours, likely in over his head.

Doug Murphy today announced due-dates for articles to be published in the winter newsletter, citing a dynamic interpolating and macrofractal schedule that prevents him from accepting articles any later than November 12.

"These are only guidelines, but they are for members' own good."  Doug said in a recent memo to the region.  "Any articles submitted after the 12th will likely suffer the effects of caffeine-afflicted editing syndrome, which is known to cause infectious grammatical errors in formerly pristine prose.  I've written and edited text on stimulants before," Doug notes in the document, "and the result was not pretty."

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Yeah, I need to go to bed now =)

July 24

I hope everyone who attended Leadership had a great time!  I'm glad that I got the opportunity to meet many of the greatest students, student leaders, and faculty in the Tennessee Region.  I would like to thank the Virginia Region for extending their hand to Tennessee through the Region to Region Linking Project, and also for their support in preparing for the upcoming International Convention in Nashville.

I immensely enjoyed meeting everybody, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to tackle the ropes course on the last day of the conference.  I learned a lot about teamwork, but I do feel we were a bit limited as we took up the final challenge, the wall.  This activity, I believe, was meant to address three concepts of group decision making - how the group can communicate to make decisions, how we distinguish different skills and attributes of our members, and how we apply those skills to successfully get everyone across the wall.  However, I feel we were discouraged to distinguish members' strengths and weaknesses, so that everyone was considered to be the same as everyone else.  At a pretty important part of our climb, when we had two above average strength men on the top and a medium build woman, I announced that I thought we should send our heavy lifters up then, while there are enough tall, strong people to catch and lift them.  A staff member, believing he was correcting me, announced that we had three strong people who could lift.  Noticing that we tended to say, "send a guy," or "send a girl" pretty often, the staff discussed the event as if we had been practicing sexual discrimination.  To me, we were just abbreviating our statements as much as possible and there was no underlying meaning behind using "boy" and "girl" as rough descriptions of what we needed on top.  I also think that it was the girls who started the trend, so it wasn't a male superiority deal.  Also, the group noted and used stronger, taller girls and used lighter guys the same as the girls.

As far as our performance in deciding who to send up, I think we did really well.  We realized that having the strongest, largest of our members at the bottom lifting was only useful to a point, and sent them up before lifting them became a problem.  We held Nathan King on reserve because he can jump (he was a bit tired by then, though), and we kept Jessica Myers to go up right before Nathan, because she is easy enough to lift for Nathan to take care of it.

While we failed to get Nathan over the wall, I don't think we should fault him.  A variety of factors played out at the end - first, as I mentioned, he had been doing his share of lifting.  Secondly, we had different contingency plans that we thought would work, but the staff decided there were too many safety issues.  So, in a real-life situation, we would have gotten over =).

Finally, Phi Theta Kappa is a leaders-based organization, so naturally we congratulated those who demonstrated leadership.  I think we should have congratulated those who tried not to lead as well.  With over 40 people, things were chaotic, and if everyone had strove for leadership we would have fallen apart.  For that reason, I salute those who accepted a limited or reserved role in the climbing activity, because I felt that stepping out and making decisions was a little easy - it felt, to me, like the right thing to do.  I'm just glad that some people resisted the urge =).

July 20

Greetings Phi Theta Kappans! I’m wonderfully excited to work as your Newsletter Coordinator for the 2001-2002 term. I’ve enjoyed learning about the region and meeting some of our outstanding members. The Tennessee region is simply rich with exceptional, pro-active students that make this position such a joy.

I am 19 years old, and I’ve lived in Knoxville most of my life. I am an avid fan of computers and the internet. I like to write fiction and a little poetry, and I am a huge fan of video games. I’d like to work in video game design or professional writing when I graduate from college, but I’m still dabbling in a variety of options.

I’ve had a wonderful time in Phi Theta Kappa. It’s really overwhelming just how much our organization is capable of as our chapters work to improve themselves through the Hallmark Program. The Tennessee region is in a period of growth that just amazes me. The region is composed of only fifteen chapters, but we are recognized internationally for our distinguished chapters, chapter officers, and regional commitment to comprehensive service and scholarship programs. The Tennessee Region really strives to give members an opportunity to affect their community.

Feel free to contact me at your leisure. I am available to update your chapter on regional activities via email or phone, and I will enthusiastically participate in a meeting or activity at your school. Have a great summer, and be on the lookout for an update on the Regional webpage!