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

By Paula Castaneda Vincent (Tzu-Wen) Cheng is an Assistant Professor in the Speech, Communication, and Theatre Arts Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Professor Cheng is from Taiwan, teaching how to speak English which is his third language. How you can be more global than that? Professor Cheng was the first speaker at the 2016 Phi Theta Kappa New York regional conference on March 4. In his speech, he introduced us to the new Honors In Action study topic, “How The World Works”. He began his speech with very interesting questions. He asked his audience how many people were born outside the U.S. and for how many people English is the second, third, fourth, etc. language. I was very surprise with the amount of people that raised their hands. His point with these questions was to show us how global we are. He made us do an exercise to test our self-awareness and see that we know practically nothing about other countries and cultures. If the world were a villa...

By Ackeem Nugent Throughout the 2016 New York Regional Conference I learned so many new things. Hearing all of the guest speakers allowed me to reflect on my personal ambitions. It’s always an honor to meet so many individuals and get to network with my peers. When I first joined Phi Theta Kappa I was so excited to be apart of a society and I felt that I could finally be around individuals with similar interests. Overall, this weekend was really dynamic. A trending theme I observed through out the general sessions is “you get in what you put out." As Chapter President over the past months, I pushed the team hard and we worked relentlessly to balance the HIA project, College Project and remain dedicated to our members by providing leadership opportunities. I believe that if we haven’t had put in so much effort and time into what we were doing we wouldn’t have been recognized for our achievements as an officer team. The quote “you get what you put out” was an idea that...

By Anika Hossain I still remember the first general meeting after the new officer team for Spring 2015-2016 was elected. They had a President, two Vice Presidents, a Secretary and a Treasurer. However, they didn’t have a Media Officer. The team did send a group email, but the Facebook page wasn’t being utilized at all. As a result, the only member who showed up to the meeting was myself. It was baffling to see a team with such great potential fail due to lack of marketing. That’s when I decided to step forward and take charge of our Facebook page. Managing a Facebook page is not as easy as I thought it would be. Anyone can be an Admin of a page, but getting people to actually read and follow your posts has a lot to do with creativity. So initially it was tough for me to attract followers. But with trial and error, I learned the secrets to effectively maintain a Facebook page. I began to post a lot of pictures because visuals reach more people rather than just plain text. When...

by Erica Nieves      From March 4-6, Alpha Theta Phi went to Borough of Manhattan Community College to join other New York chapters in another exciting PTK conference. What’s different about this conference is that we were co-hosting and that it held regional award ceremonies. On Saturday March 5, I won Most Distinguished Chapter Member. I won out of who knows how many entries in the New York region. My mouth was very close to touching the ground hearing my name, even though it was mispronounced. From winning Most Distinguished Chapter Member came with a free membership to Zeta, the New York Phi Theta Kappa alumni association organization and a $100 scholarship. Being selected as the Most Distinguished Chapter Member means that I was willing to help out my fellow team of officers whenever I could and that I was a leader within the chapter . Even though I had to miss work sometimes to help the chapter , I was more than willing to help out with our proj...

By Paula Castaneda 1. There are people that say that you go to conventions if you just help the chapter with its activities and/or attend the general meetings? Is this true? Yes! When you join PTK, you have the chance to attend super fun conventions in different parts of the country. In these conventions you learn a lot from amazing speakers and transfer fairs that inform you about scholarships opportunities and different universities. You also get to network with lots of people from different places. The best part of networking is the Regional Officers plan games where we get to know each other in a fun way so we can skip that weird part of start talking with a stranger. To go to conventions, you should be an active member and be on the lookout for emails from our advisors asking for applications. 2. You get money just for being part of PTK. Is this true? It depends. PTK offers two types of scholarships. One of them is the transfer scholarship that is offered by some universit...

by Akampreet Kaur A community college student faces many hardships throughout his/her journey to success. You need to stand out of many students in order to make something out of yourself. Transferring can be tough for many students but all it takes is dedication. You need to make yourself stand out from millions of other students. Phi Theta Kappa is a great chance to make your future more successful and be recognized for your hard work. Not only will it make me stand out from my peers but it will also, guide me to the right direction of my goals. I see myself one day hopefully teaching an elementary classroom filled with young minds ready to learn new things. Childhood Education appeals to me the most because kids are basically the future; I will get to teach future teachers, doctors, scientists, etc. Education played a really big part in my life that I plan to continue in the future by becoming a teacher. I want to have some sort of an impact on my student’s lives by inspiring t...

By Tessa Clark One of the benefits that drew me into accepting my membership to Phi Theta Kappa was some of the scholarship opportunities that this foundation offers. I took some time off from my education and now that I am getting reengaged with learning I would like to be able to fully immerse myself and not have to worry about paying loans when I graduate. Phi Theta Kappa shows academic excellence and it will help me further along in my educational journey. I have very high aspirations for myself and would like to attend an Ivy League school after I receive my Associate Degree from LaGuardia. I feel that Phi Theta Kappa will help me to achieve my dreams and also help introduce me to like-minded intelligent people who have set high standards and goals for themselves. I want to be able to network with people who know what they want from their education and who are progressive in their thinking and attitudes. I am looking forwards to going to events and discussing topics with people...