Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, Virginia Tech

So, my name is Byron Hughes. I serve as director of Fraternity and Sorority Life here at Virginia Tech. I think the overall mission is really just in concert with what we believe here at Virginia Tech. Which is to empower, to educate, to advocate for, to really truly help students understand their experiences and ultimately how they are involving themselves whether in fraternity and sorority in a way that adds to their learning, their growth and their development as people. Normally a busy typical day might look like meeting with students as they have needs their questions regarding chapter operations. It may be with volunteers, so all of our fraternities and sororities are supported by local volunteers or even national, regional volunteers, that spend their time also helping those chapters. The other side of it is also just supervision of our team. So, we're on a team of about eight folks, who also work and do the same type of experiences in developing students. So, our office falls into both leadership education and community development within fraternity, sorority life. So, my time is also then spent thinking about, "What are our programs?" "What are our initiatives that really should help advance both of those?" "Who are we spending time with outside of our office?" So, partners and colleagues from around campus that may have needs or issues or things that could be helpful to us as well ways which would be helpful to them. So, a schedule might look like, we have what's called a fraternal leaders institute series. Which is a series of leadership experiences that happen throughout the course of the year. Some are for emerging leaders in a group, some are for average members, some are for advanced leaders, some are topical related. For example, an inter group dialouge around social justice and diversity. A typical week may look like developing those programs, implementing those programs and recruiting students to be part of those programs, writing curriculum for those experiences too. Then as well preparing to go out and to facilitate that programming. The other side again of our area is also community development. So then it's thinking about working with student groups. The thing about the events and the activities that they are planning that do bring people together and that are meant to bring all people together not just certainly a few chapters here or a few students here. So, you know it is helping students think about, "What are my strengths?" "What are my capacities?" "What is that ultimately..." "Who am I trying to lead?" "Why am I trying to lead?" Then really equipping them in the end to hopefully do that leadership for themselves.