Sigma Phi Epsilon, the newest addition to Greek life at Quinnipiac, spent a weekend visiting their roots and developing new skills in Richmond, Va. when they attended the Carlson Leadership Academy conference over winter break.

Four e-board members: Vice President of Finance Adam Murphy, Vice President of Recruitment Andrew Turczak, Vice President of Membership Development Sean McGuinness and President David Chalmers, along with their Chapter Counselor, Vincent Framularo, headed down to Richmond which is the national headquarters for SigEp.

The conference was mandatory for all new chapters. “We learned to better ourselves in four basic areas: finance, recruitment, brother development and the president position,” Turczak said.

The boys listened to speakers, participated in team building exercises and attended meetings for each position on e-board. The intro speaker spoke about conflict resolution within the fraternity. When the e-board broke up into smaller groups by position, Quinnipiac SigEps got to talk to other brothers from Arizona State and Oklahoma State. They shared ideas on how to start a chapter on the right foot with proper leadership.

“We learned how to start and run a chapter with Sigma Phi Epsilon views so we are all united as one,” Turczak said.

With the mission of the “Balanced Man,” the men had to dress in business attire throughout the entire conference.

“We also learned dinner etiquette from SigEp’s own ‘Mom Nonnie,'” Vice President of Finance and Sophomore Business Management major, Adam Murphy, said. “It was all very formal and proper and we hope to have an etiquette dinner on campus with one of the sororities soon,” Turczak said.

When all the “formal and proper” things were done, the boys got the opportunity to play a game of broom ball.

“Broom ball is basically hockey on the ice but with brooms and no skates and a big ball” McGuinness said.

The conference was especially important in helping the brothers implement policies and showing them how to recruit. “The most important lesson I learned at the conference was if we do not recruit properly, we are setting ourselves up for failure,” McGuinness said.

Murphy agreed. “It was a great experience for not only us individual executive board members, but also for our chapter to which we brought back a lot of great information,” Murphy said. “We all had officer training sessions and we had one-on-one chapter consultations, and we set a goal date to submit our chartering application to headquarters.”

SigEp believes a strong e-board is essential to success.

“They can help to promote events which help us to achieve our goals of having a Sound Mind and Sound Body,” McGuinness said.

SigEp hopes to put what they learned at the conference to use at Quinnipiac.

“We are going to take what we learned, analyze it, and decide what works best for our individual chapter,” McGuinness said. “We’ll come up with a plan to get chartered and begin a distinguished tradition here at Quinnipiac.”

Murphy felt only one regret. “It was an awesome experience and I only wish that all brothers could have been there,” Murphy said.