Have you ever found something in life that inspired such passion within you that you couldn’t imagine not fighting for it? That is exactly how I feel about my work with fraternity and sorority life, specifically the Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. My experience volunteering with SigEp is quite unusual being that I am a female who, up until 2014, never had any direct responsibility for a SigEp chapter.

As a new professional in the field of higher education administration in 2007, I immediately set out to find an organization that I could volunteer for that was doing something meaningful. One short discussion later with David Stollman, Maryland-College Park ’94, a new friend of mine in the field, and I was on my way to a long-term career volunteering with SigEp.

I have to admit it took very little to convince me that this was the place for me to share my passion once I learned a bit about what this Fraternity offers to its members. SigEp is a clear leader in the fraternity and sorority community, which was evident by their Balanced Man Program and leadership events such as EDGE, Carlson and Ruck. In addition, the Fraternity has an advanced staffing structure and approach to fraternity, which as a campus based professional, I very much appreciate.

I began my volunteer career as a member of the Alumni and Volunteer Corporation for the New York Phi Chapter at Columbia and quickly grew into the role of Balanced Man Steward due to my knowledge of undergraduate leadership development. The men I worked with in that chapter were not only impressive, but were examples of what a fraternity man should and could be. In fact, I found this notion to be true no matter who the SigEp undergraduate that I interacted with was. I remember taking a moment to listen to the conversations that the presidents in that track were having at Carlson and knowing that the future of the fraternity community was in good hands with these types of students at the helm.

It wasn’t until 2014, when I began working at Stevens, that I finally had my very own SigEp chapter on a campus I worked on. I knew before I even got to campus that this group would be special, and they have not let me down. I sometimes get goose bumps thinking about the impact that these men have on all of those around them. Want to be inspired? Spend a day or two in the New Jersey Alpha Residential Learning Community and just watch and listen.

I will be forever proud of New Jersey Alpha RLC for many of their milestones, but one of these remains special to me. In the spring of 2015, I asked the chapter to apply for the inaugural Josette George Kaufman Award from the Northeast Greek Leadership Association for their Sound Mind Sound Body program, LIFT. This simple ask lead to tears of joy for me when they were announced as the winners of the first Josette George Kaufman Award.

This chapter and SigEp, nationally, have made other impressions on me as a professional as well. When it came time to decide on the topic of my research for my dissertation in my doctoral program, I knew that it must be to support this organization and the work they do. Inspired by the living-learning environment that New Jersey Alpha RLC has created, I chose to research the impact that the Residential Learning Community program has on its members. I hope to be able to pull out the best practices in order to inform programming for other fraternities looking for a solution to address the behavioral and academic issues they are experiencing within their own chapter houses. My work will highlight the good that SigEp is doing with its timely programs.

But really, what is it that makes me volunteer with SigEp? It’s because of the love and belief I have in what this Fraternity does for its undergraduate members and communities that they are part of. SigEp inspires professionals like me to keep doing our work day in and day out. Anyone who knows me knows that I stand up for what I believe in and Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity is an organization that I will stand up for any day. This Fraternity IS different.

Thea Zunick is the Associate Director of Student Life at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. Her 8+ years as a full-time higher education professional has spanned work in fraternity and sorority life, leadership, service, diversity, orientation, wellness and campus programming. She is currently enrolled in the Educational Doctorate Program at Rutgers to fulfill her personal value of lifelong learning and to contribute to the body of research on fraternity life. She serves on the Conference Planning committee for the Northeast Greek Leadership Association (NGLA) and is also on the Nominations and Elections Committee (NEC) of the Association of Fraternity and Sorority Advisors. Zunick also volunteers for multiple fraternities and sororities each year. Connect with Thea on Twitter.