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While most people I know spent the last six months in a classroom, behind a desk or sitting at home, I spent it in my car and on the road. After graduating from college, I immediately moved to Indianapolis to start working for Phi Psi as an Educational Leadership Consultant (ELC), and after spending the summer training I hit the road in late August. Four months, 16 states, 23 chapters and 14,000 miles later I returned to Indianapolis with countless pictures, experiences and memories.
My territory stretched from Pennsylvania, south to Florida and extending west as far as the easternmost part of Texas. I was in a new city every three to four days and sometimes spent numerous days in a row on the road, like the time I had to travel over 2,000 miles from Texas to Pennsylvania in four days, but couldn’t go up the gulf coast because Hurricane Rita was coming.
When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a consultant. It’s only after I tell them I’m a consultant for my Fraternity that they roll their eyes and ask, "So what exactly do you do?" Well, I tell them, after being assigned a territory, I visit all of the chapters within it and consult them.
"Yes, but what exactly do you do?" they inevitably ask. The answer ends up being a very complicated one because my responsibilities change with every chapter I visit. Some of them need help with recruitment, some with academics, some don’t perform any community service and others don’t even know the grip or how to properly perform the Ritual at meetings and initiations. And so my job is to visit these chapters, assess their areas of need and try my hardest to help them while I’m there.
As long as a chapter wants to improve, our job can be very rewarding and very successful. A chapter that had not initiated a new member in over two years initiated six new brothers after I helped them redo their recruitment program. Another chapter had lost touch with all of their alumni, but after I left they had a complete contact list and were already planning to celebrate a chapter anniversary during Founders Day. And yet another chapter had the lowest GPA among all the other fraternities at their school, but before I left they had instituted new policies that have already helped to improve their standing on campus.
But as Jack Nicholson’s character said in the movie "The Shining," "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and one very nice aspect of this job is that we can essentially make our own schedules and therefore take plenty of time to sightsee in between chapter visits. In Tennessee I saw the Baltimore Ravens play the Titans at The Coliseum and took a tour of the Jack Daniel’s distillery and Graceland; in Florida I saw the Maryland Terrapins play Florida State in their homecoming game; in St. Louis I visited the Arch and the Budweiser brewery; in Atlanta I toured CNN Tower and visited a friend in Savannah over the weekend; I was able to plan my schedule so that I was near my chapter during alumni weekend; and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
When people ask me why I took this job, instead of going into journalism like I had originally wanted, I tell them that there are two reasons - I wouldn’t be who I was today if it weren’t for Phi Psi and my brothers and I wanted to give something back to the organization that had been so good to me for so long. And in the process, I get to tour the country, see and do things that I would have never had the opportunity to experience otherwise, and at the same time I get to make Greek life in this country better, one chapter at a time.
The Educational Leadership Consultant position is open to any alumnus member of the fraternity regardless of initiation chapter or level of involvement within the chapter as an undergraduate. The position runs from June 1 to May 31 each year, with consultants having the option of traveling multiple years if they desire. If you are interested in applying to be an Educational Leadership Consultant or have more questions about the program please contact the Fraternity Headquarters.
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