Alpha Theta Phi Chapter - Phi Theta Kappa - LaGuardia Community College

by Christian Glatz              The definition for Urban Farming is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. The real value for Urban Farming is a community coming together, selecting a location (usually an abandoned lot) and turning it into a location where each person can cultivate produce, eat it and trade it with fellow members.                                    The main idea behind growing your own produce is the ability to consume it while it still holds all its nutrients. The Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment notes that food transported long distances is not likely to be as nutritious as food grown and consumed locally.                                   Living in urban areas, such as New York City, makes it nearly impossible for you to grow your own produce. You have to become very creative and resourceful if you want to become a farmer in a city where 80% is covered by concret

By Stella Akuzie To promote the feeling of fellowship at the NY Region Phi Theta Kappa Leadership Conference held at Kingsborough Community College, the NY regional officers planned many fun activities that involved people socializing. One of the activities was an icebreaker called two truths and a lie. In this game people had to find a group with people from other colleges to play the game with. The game required individuals to say three sentences about themselves, two of which were true and one, a lie. The others in the group had to point out which of the three sentences was the lie. So, you sit across an individual who you’ve only seen a few times or even for the first time and you draw a conclusion about them based on looks, dress, façade, maybe tone, dialect etc. The purpose of the game was to get people to relax and get to know something about each other. This proved to be an effective way to make people mingle in a crowd that was originally a bunch of strangers to each

by Heebeom Yang I am an officer of Phi Theta Kappa. My chapter at LaGuardia Community College is named Alpha Theta Phi. As a Southern District New York regional Chapter, we went to the  Honors in Action conference from October 4 th to 6 th at Kingsborough Community College.  Before going there, I was interested in attending the event because it will be the first conference that I have attended in my entire life. During the three days, I got lots of information about Phi Theta Kappa from guest speakers and regional officers. For me, the most impressive of part of the conference was attending a workshop on Competitive Edge, which was lead by a regional officer. If we are planning to apply for scholarships, transfer to a four-year college, or prepare for interviews for a job then this Competitive Edge program is one of the greatest tools for all Phi Theta Kappa members. It is a self-paced, professional development plan available exclusively to Phi Theta Kappa members. Members wi

by Peter Kim During the PTK conference, key note speaker Mr. Scott Stimfel gave us one simple task: in 15 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be balanced on top of the structure. Each team began to build structuring and collaborating with team members, but as time tick ed down to the end, a lot of teams’ structure s crumbled. At the end, most teams fail ed to build a free standing structure or could not build a 20 inch tall structure which could support the weight of a marshmallow. After this activity, the keynote speaker told us why most of team s were having difficulty building this structure or complet ing this task. Mr. Stimfel displayed a chart that showed that recent graduates of kindergarten had a better success rate than college students or graduates in accomplishing this task . The reasoning was that, adults made plans ,

By: Tishara Reid         On the weekend of October 4-6 th I had the pleasure of attending Phi Theta Kappa’s New York Region Honors in Action Conference. The event was held at Kingsborough Community College. It was indeed a pleasure to be in an atmosphere with students that shared similar goals and aspirations as myself.         The most impressive segment of the conference for me was the speech by Historian Ron Schweiger. His main session was entitled “It’s a small world: Competition and Geography”. Schweiger is the official Historian of the Borough of Brooklyn. Schweiger was appointed to that position by the current Borough President of Brooklyn. Out of all the presenters at the conference, I noticed that Schweiger was the only keynote speaker opted to use the “old school” approach of hand written charts rather than using a typical PowerPoint presentation. I found it very interesting that he was still able to captivate his audience.        In this session Schweiger gave us a

by Ross Adler        During the PTK New York regional conference, several speakers spoke about the culture of competition and how it relates to the push for better food and food production in the United States. One topic was “Urban Land Access for Food Production -- Community Gardens in New York City, the 2008 United States Farm Bill, and Food Population Nutrition -- Starting with Corn”. While all of these topics are interesting and worthwhile, the particular topic that piqued my interest the most is the topic of Community Gardens in New York City. During the 1970s, New York City experienced an urban decline which led to a slew of abandoned properties. Because of abandonment, these properties plummeted in value, they ceased to have function within their communities, and they had almost no use to the city.             During this time, people within these communities came together and slowly created and planted vegetable gardens in the abandoned properties in an effort to not