The University of Wisconsin-Platteville Kappa Delta Pi Iota Rho Chapter was one of the honored recipients of the 2018-19 Membership Chapter Program Award, presented by Kappa Delta Pi.
Kappa Delta Pi is an international honor society in education, established to sustain an honored community of diverse educators by promoting excellence and advancing scholarship, leadership and service. Its awards for education excellence “honor those individuals and chapters for their significant contributions to the Society and the education world.”
“I am very honored and humbled that our chapter is receiving this award after a successful year of membership growth adding 44 new members,” said Brianne Boughton, a senior elementary education major at UW-Platteville from Lancaster, Wisconsin, and membership chair of the Iota Rho Chapter. “It has been very rewarding recruiting new members and exciting to see so many students pursuing education.”
The Iota Rho Chapter will be formally recognized at Kappa Delta Pi’s 53rd Annual Convocation, to be held Oct. 24-26 in Norfolk, Virginia. The event, themed “The Power of You,” will provide participants with an opportunity to meet with peer educators and education experts from around the world and will feature renowned keynote speakers, workshops, breakout sessions and a career fair, according to the program details.
“Convocation is my major source of learning new information and gaining inspiration,” said Dr. Rea Kirk, professor of special education at UW-Platteville. “World-renowned educators speak at this conference. Just to be in the presence of these top-class educators is awe-inspiring. Getting to actually talk to them and to network with people with the same dedication to our future from around the world is transformational.”
Kirk noted that the international headquarters sets each chapter’s goal based on a number of factors, including the size of the department or school of education at the university/college. “We not only exceeded our goal, through Brianne’s leadership and our wonderful executive board, we almost doubled the number of new initiates,” said Kirk.
UW-Platteville’s Iota Rho Chapter co-advisors include Kirk and Dr. Peggy Marciniec, associate professor of education at UW-Platteville, who was elected to the international board of Kappa Delta Pi last year.
The Iota Rho Chapter currently has 83 active members. Officers and others who have accepted leadership roles include Shelby Skiles (president), Alli Locy, Alyssa Herwig, Lauren Graham, Emily Powers, Carly Rindy, Courtney Dzaboff, Jacob Kuehn, Lyndsey Holl, Emily Suiter and Haley Daniels. Last semester’s officers included Gabby Saunders, president; Sam White, vice president; Ava Volkening, secretary; Danielle Dillion, treasurer; Hannah Digman, fundraiser; Brianne Boughton, membership chair; Karli Wachter, historian; and Haley Daniels, social media chair.
“We had an exceptionally good semester because of strong executive board leadership and a group of students who worked very well together and respected different ideas and personality traits,” said Kirk. “Becky Hass, the involvement coordinator at the Markee Pioneer Student Center, trained us at our beginning-of-semester officer retreat on different management styles and this helped us to be an inclusive and effective organization.”