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A spirit that is not afraid

Business fraternities bring majors together to mirror real-world

<p>The Harbert College of Business is located in Lowder Hall,&nbsp;taken on Saturday, Feb 24, 2018 in Auburn, Ala.</p>

The Harbert College of Business is located in Lowder Hall, taken on Saturday, Feb 24, 2018 in Auburn, Ala.

While fraternities are normally associated with Greek life, there are many professional fraternities on campus located within several different schools that serve to further students’ career opportunities.

One such coeducational fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, is located within the Herbert College of Business. Alex Charleston, junior in accounting and president of Delta Sigma Pi, shared how the organization offers memberships to a wide range of business students.  

“Unlike a fraternity like Beta Alpha Psi, which is just accounting majors, for example, we have any business major,” Charleston said. “So for us, we just don’t focus on individual majors, we focus on overall business professional development.”

Having multiple different focuses in their fraternity allows members to gain even more real-world experience, he said.

“Like any business, you will be working with people from all different majors, not necessarily just the ones in your field, so it’s reflective of our fraternity that we have that environment,” he said. 

As a part of this fraternity, Charleston said that the goal is to provide members with opportunities to advance within their given field of study by prepping students for internships and jobs, while also forming connections with others who are on a similar career track. 

“We host workshops for our members, whether it be resumes, interviews or LinkedIn,” he said. “Also, we have a variety of speakers come in and talk about either their business or just a general topic like salary negotiation that anyone could relate to.”

Normally, meetings would be held in person every week, but things have changed because of COVID-19, including how members meet and what they can do. 

“As for meeting right now, we are all online,” he said. “We do our meetings over Zoom, which is lucky because we don’t need to meet in person. But we also plan to hopefully have some in-person social gatherings such as socially-distant social events or community service events.”

Charleston said that despite these challenges, Delta Sigma Pi still hopes to provide its members with a similar atmosphere as in years past. 

“The pandemic has definitely thrown a curve ball into the situation, but we fully intend to bring our best regardless of the difficulty,” he said. 

Haley McCrossan is the vice president of membership for Alpha Kappa Psi, another coed professional business fraternity. Similar to Delta Sigma Pi, it is open to all business school students.

“While it is centered in the business school, the fraternity [Alpha Kappa Psi] is accepting all, regardless of major,” she said. “The goal of the fraternity is to develop principled business leaders and prepare students to enter any career field.”

McCrossan said that the goal of Alpha Kappa Psi is to provide the students with all the necessary information and connections needed to be successful in their career field. 

“The fraternity holds several different events to help brothers strengthen their skills and their professional networks,” she said. “This includes professional development events, such as resume and LinkedIn workshops, speaker series and public speaking workshops.” 

Like Delta Sigma Pi, Alpha Kappa Psi will hold several different events throughout the year that will provide their members with everything they need to be successful after graduation.

“While we focus on developing our professional skills, we make sure to have fun as well,” McCrossan said. “We will have social events and bonding events, with the goal of creating strong relations within our fraternity. These events are useful to every Auburn student as they prepare to enter the professional world, and we hope that the relationships and experiences made through Alpha Kappa Psi will be carried with brothers wherever they go.”

Even with setbacks from COVID-19, McCrossan said that the fraternity will still try to create an engaging environment for its members. 

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“While the pandemic has made it a little more challenging, we will still be having events every week and we will be having fall rush for anyone interested in joining,” McCrossan said. “We will still be having all professional development and social events that we had originally planned, just over Zoom.”


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