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Best Wishes,
Kallie Nealis
==Highlights of 2017==
Throughout the past year, Beta Upsilon has grown tremendously. We opened up our year with the spring semester strong. After electing the new chapter officers, chapter council worked diligently to ensure the success of the chapter. This year, we actually held recruitment in the spring so we welcomed a new pledge class into our chapter and eventually initiated those new members near the end of the semester. We held our Spring Formal that allowed members to mingle and spend quality time together. We also had a senior send off for the seniors that graduated. We also held a parent date party that showcased our hard work to our parents. Over the summer, many individuals continued their leadership skills learned through Kappa at various summer internships. As I mentioned before, something that changed for our fall semester is the change that West Virginia University made to formal recruitment. WVU will no longer hold fall formal recruitment. This is still a huge adjustment for our chapter but we are working towards improving this.
We held our annual Founders Day celebration and welcomed many alumna into our house. During the weekend of Founders Day, one of the past pledge classes held a reunion and they all attended our ceremony, making this Founders day one for the books. This year we also held our annual Hoops for Huggins philanthropy that raises money for the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund. In addition to that, we held Kappa Dodgeball that raises money for Reading is Fundamental. To also assist with RIF, we continued our tradition of reading to the local elementary schools. During this effort, we donated over 150 books to children in surrounding schools. We also participated in Greek Day of Service, which is a school-wide community service event. This event allows all the fraternities and sororities to interact with each other by participating in various community service efforts. While this day is extremely important to Beta Upsilon, the assistance doesn't stop there. We participate in a wide range of efforts around the city of Morgantown, as well as the other fraternity and sorority philanthropy events. As you can see, Beta Upsilon cares about community service and always shows interest in helping those in need. To build our chapter as a whole, we host a lot of sisterhood events to help members connect and bond over fun activities. We take pride in all the activities our chapter participates in and we hope that our mentality for leadership and involvement will stay with all our members when they graduate and leave West Virginia University and Beta Upsilon.
This year, our chapter has seen a lot of changes that have been campus related. First, we received a new Director of Greek Life. This changed a lot of things for our chapter. This also changed some of the rules to the previous Accreditation Program that was implemented. In addition to that, we are still trying to adjust to the changes that WVU made to recruitment. With formal recruitment being in the spring, we had to make some changes to our normal practices.
Beta Upsilon has historically/traditionally raised money for Kappa Kappa Gamma's philanthropy, Reading is Fundamental. In addition to that, we raise money for a local philanthropy, the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund. The Endowment Fund supports clinical cancer research that focuses on diseases that are common among West Virginians. Our chapter also enjoys participating in various fraternity philanthropy events. Our chapter requires all members to participate in one philanthropic event per semester, outside of the ones Beta Upsilon coordinates.
With Reading is Fundamental being our national philanthropy, we feel that it is really important as a chapter to contribute to this initiative. Aside from that, this philanthropy is extremely important to our local community and state. Seventy three percent of WV third graders read below grade level. This issue is extremely prevalent in our state which makes it more important for us to take action. As a chapter, we are able to connect with children in our local schools by motivating them to read and stimulate their creativity.
The Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Research Endowment Fund is also important to our chapter for the local impact it has. This fund was created by West Virginia University's men's basketball coach, Bob Huggins, in memory of his mother who passed away of colon cancer. This fund assists clinical cancer research for West Virginians. Supporting this organization allows us to see a positive impact for the great people in the mountain state. Every year we hold "Hoops for Huggins" which is an event that helps us raise money for the endowment fund.
There has been multiple philanthropic efforts we contribute to as well for other reasons. Whenever Beta Upsilon notices a need for community service, we show no hesitation to jump into the community and help out.
==Highlights of the 2020s:==