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

by Paula Castaneda Kevin S. Brame is the Executive Director of IPSLEI, which stands for International Public Safety, Leadership and Ethics Institute. Mr. Brame led an educational forum at the 2016 Phi Theta Kappa International Convention; he began by saying that everyone sees conflict in a different way and he gave us an excellent example of this. He showed us the following picture and he asked us if the cup was half empty or half full. Some people said half full and other people said half empty. Who was wrong? Nobody. This is a perfect example of the different ways we can see something. We bring conflict into our lives because of our perspective and failing to recognize another perspective. Conflict is about communication and communication is the only key to success. Difficult communication, or anything that makes you uncomfortable, is necessary to resolve any conflict. Mr. Brame claims that conflict has 3 different conversations: 1) What happened, 2) Feelin...

by Kimly Tor The New York regional convention for this year took place at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) for three days from March 4 to March 6, 2016 and our chapter, Alpha Theta Phi, was the co-host of the event. An overall responsibility that we had as a co-host was to make sure that our guests, who are students and advisors from other chapters, were welcomed into the home. On the first day, we took an initiative to make sure that our guests who were new to New York City did not get lost in the city. Four of our officers and members volunteered to take care of this by going to the hotel where our guests stayed at and brought them to BMCC where the event took place. When they arrived at the BMCC, three of our officers and one BMCC’s officer welcomed them with big smiles and gave them their name tags (which were also prepared by us) and the program book for the whole event. During lunch and dinner break, we also helped regulate the guests by allowing two tables at a...

by Anika Hossain Every year, Phi Theta Kappans around the globe have an amazing opportunity to attend “Nerd Nation”, a convention which brings Phi Theta Kappa members together and celebrate. As the name of the convention implies, Nerd Nation is not exactly a vacation. In fact, Nerd Nation’s goal is to make nerds even more “nerdy”. And that’s why, Nerd Nation offers various educational forums of different topics to stimulate intellect in a fun way. Of the many educational forums I have attended, my favorite one was building teams with improv. The workshop begun with the presenters asking the audience “Why is Improv important?” to which they answered “Because improv is life!” I had never thought about improv that deeply, but it’s definitely true that our whole life is based on improvising. Things don’t necessarily always work out the way we plan it out. The presenters further explained with an example of a shirt. The shirt that you’ve always wanted to wear to your best friend’s wedd...

by Erica Nieves  From April 7 to April 10, I had the opportunity to attend the Phi Theta Kappa International Convention located in National Harbor, MD. This keynote speaker was Lord John Eatwell, President of Queens’ College Cambridge and economist. His presentation covered of what is an important issue talked about in this Presidential election: the state of the financial industry.  According to Lord Eatwell, the framework of rules governing the U.S. banking system is not determined by Congress but rather by an international committee in Basel, Switzerland called BCBS. I thought this fact was a little strange, as I never heard about this before. Plus, I had always known that Congress deregulated the banking system by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act. I had thought, if there was a committee like that, they would’ve objected to how the U.S. handled the financial system before the recession. He goes on to say that the financial systems were based on trust and confidence,...