How to Maintain an Active Chapter

1) Decide that your SPS chapter is going to make meaningful contributions.

Decided that your chapter is going to make meaningful contributions to the professional development of the students and to the culture of your department, and that YOU are going to be the person who makes it happen.

2) Decide from the beginning that your chapter will participate in SPS Zone meetings.

Such involvement will drive everything else your chapter hopes to accomplish. Contact your Zone Councilor and Associate Councilor for information about the next meeting in your Zone or nearby Zones, or check out our calendar. Make necessary plans (e.g., fund raising) well in advance. Be innovative in ways to cut expenses (e.g., some host chapters will invite visitors with space to roll out sleeping bags in the homes and dorm rooms of their members).

3) Plan local meetings, tours, and social events; about one event per month.

Your chapter will benefit from SPS-sponsored chapter colloquiums with local speakers (these can be part of the department’s regular colloquium schedule, or a separate schedule run by SPS) and tours of nearby academic or industrial laboratories. Showing a physics-related video or science-fiction film is enjoyable. Include several social events on your calendar (e.g., parties and picnics), because fellowship is important too!

For speakers, ask physicists and other scientists from your campus or nearby schools, and local engineers and other technical people who use the sciences and mathematics in industry and business. Local speakers will usually speak to student groups at no charge to you, but do not forget to practice hospitality (e.g., have cookie time before the talk, and, if possible, take the speaker to dinner afterwards).

4) Be outward looking.

This begins with Zone participation, and continues by “taking physics on the road,” with programs such as “Physics Circuses” to local grades K-12. Until every physicist (including undergraduates) is at least taking lenses and magnets into a local elementary school classroom, and working cooperatively with the teacher there to encourage the pupil’s interest in science, we as a professional community are not doing all we know to do for science literacy and appreciation. SPS can display the best way to participate in science outreach to grades K-12 and the general public.

Set up a math-physics tutoring service for your campus or a nearby elementary or secondary school. Help a local school organize and judge its science fair. Collaborate with other campus student organizations in projects of mutual interest. Present papers on your outreach programs at Zone meetings.

When your chapter has an established outreach program, tell us about it in your Chapter Report! We may share your story in The SPS Observer to advertise this event to other chapters.

5) Involve students in undergraduate research experience.

The research experience does not have to be publishable, that can come later, and the objectives of undergraduate research are too important to leave only to publishable projects. These objectives include the following:

• developing the skills and habits of mind that cannot be taught in courses
• acquiring communication skills in presenting results at Zone meetings
• becoming a participant in the life of the professional community through involvement in meetings

6) Be visible.

Send descriptions of your members’ outreach efforts to the local community, your participation in professional meetings, and other activities to your campus and other local newspapers. Send the SPS National Office newsworthy items that we can pass on to other chapters. Place an SPS mailbox in the department mailroom, obtain an electronic mail address for SPS use, and arrange for an SPS student office/lounge. Point out to the department chair that these amenities are an investment in the esprit de corps of the physics majors. When the majors “own” a piece of the department, they obtain a sense of identity that course work alone cannot provide. Participate with other campus organizations in projects of campus-wide interest. Have an exhibit on new-student welcome week. If your school has a homecoming parade, have an SPS entry in it!

7) Make your chapter a valuable asset to the physics department.

The esprit de corps of your chapter can set the tone for the departmental culture. The accomplishments of your chapter can serve as an important and documentable asset in the recruitment of prospective students. Your chapter meetings can serve as colloquiums for the department.

8) Involve freshmen and sophomore students.

Too often an active chapter becomes inactive when one or two student leaders graduate. To make meaningful activity in your chapter a tradition, invite students to join SPS as soon as possible, and get them involved in all your activities and events without delay. Posters on campus and scheduled five-minute presentations in introductory university physics courses are helpful, and personal contacts are especially effective. Make sure some newer students attend Zone meetings, even if they go as spectators. While their colleagues present papers they begin visualizing themselves presenting papers too. If you have more volunteers than jobs, you can always create more roles (e.g., “chapter publicist,” “chapter historian,” etc., are all useful titles).

9) If your chapter does not already have a Sigma Pi Sigma chapter, take steps towards chartering one.

See the Sigma Pi Sigma Mission Statement, and information about chartering a chapter of Sigma Pi Sigma.

10) Look over the Chapter Annual Report Form and SPS Calendar now.

These will help you get started by providing objectives at which to aim. In May, be sure to send the completed report to the SPS National Office by the deadline date. That way, your chapter will be eligible for an “Outstanding Chapter Award.”