Welcoming New Members
Since chapters are in the midst of fall recruitment, I wanted to share some ideas on how to help new members integrate and feel welcome into the chapter.
Encourage and help build Big-Little and “Family” Mentorship
When I was the President of my premedical chapter, some feedback my E-board often received was that new members felt it was intimidating to try to get to know every current chapter member, and that their “families” helped immensely with this. I highly recommend chapters creating a Big-Little mentorship program by assigning each new member a “big”, and helping the chapter create smaller “families”. While these smaller groups are definitely not meant to take the place of whole-chapter activities and relationships, they can definitely help new members meet people one group at a time and always feel they have a handful of very accessible and familiar faces to reach out to. If your chapter already has a big-little program, I’d consider encouraging that each family has a social within the first month of welcoming new members.
Feel free to reach out if you have questions about starting a Big-Little and Family structure within your chapter!
Plan chapter-wide activities both during and outside of general meetings.
During general meetings, try new ice-breakers so that your new members can meet new people each week. Try randomly assigning small groups if your chapter is so large that one large ice-breaker won’t be efficient. Also consider planning a few extra chapter-wide socials or group service projects so the new members can see your amazing PhiDE family in action.
As an executive board member, make it a point to get to know every single new member ASAP.
I think one of the most important parts of being a leader is being approachable so that the members you represent feel they can ask questions or give you feedback at any time. The most natural way to support this leadership skill is to form genuine relationships/friendships with as many of your peers that you represent as possible. All the members that were welcomed into my chapter when I was on the E-board are definitely very special PhiDE family to me, and I think getting to know each new member made the entire experience that much more rewarding.
