We did more study breaks! Moon cakes, Pumpkin Carving, Bob Ross skincare! This expands the Scholarship Chair role to doing some alcohol-free social events. We also did the typical things like the pset partner's Google Sheets form and Wikithon. We will need more budget in the future.
Not much to do about study breaks because of the virtual COVID semester, but Webmaster and I put up an end-of-year (specifically, week before finals) Wiki-thon and course bible update. During the beginning of the year I sent out a Google Sheets to help brothers find pset partners for different classes, and we used this sheet to assign courses for brothers to update. This is also where basically all of the scholarship budget went; we gave brothers who showed up a $20 UberEats meal as an incentive to help out.
I think my biggest contribution this semester was doing a mass update of the wiki and course bibles through a Wiki-thon. I want to push to have Wiki-thons be a regular event run by Scholarship Chair and Webmaster (I'm both this semester). This semester I basically just organized a large study break with boba, as well as organizing the wiki-thon to update course bibles for the year. It seems like Scholarship chair has a lot of room to take on more responsibilities. One particular task that I think we should definitely revive is handling the IRDF Grants. They reimburse all educational material costs, and 6.25% of all additional operating costs (?)! That's a shit ton of money. SchoChair should also handle the updating of course bibles. SchoChair and Webmaster should team up and organize a wiki-thon every semester to keep all Theta Xi digital content up to date. This semester I was both so I was able to do it, and I think it should definitely continue on.
Wiki-thon Workflow The Wiki-thon requires assigning several people tasks and tracking their progress. A massive kanban board workflow made the most sense. I put all the tasks for updating wiki and course bibles on a free online kanban board tool called Kanbanflow. I sent out a sign up for the Wiki-thon, and then invited all the signed up people to the kanban board. Then, I assigned each person to specific tasks.
As they complete the tasks, they move them from the 'ToDo' column into the 'Doing' and then the 'To Review' column. I then reviewed the tasks to make sure they got done, and put them in the 'Done' column myself. This allowed brothers to also work from their rooms or work remotely and still contribute to the wiki session.
As of now, study nights/study points are not really popular. Future Scholarship Chairs should think of ideas of how to make study nights and the mandatory scholarship something brothers and AMs (!!) want to participate in. A tip: Wings cost a lot of many and doesn't make people study more. Use your budget more wisely. I advise amending the mandatory scholarship so that more people get the prize and AMs can get it too. TAXI talks have been started this year and they have been pretty successful. However, I think there is a great potential to improve TAXI Talks. They could become as a social event that brings the house together and our friends over as we go to a super academically oriented school. A couple of ideas:
Scholarship Chair used to have more to do. Before the Webmaster position was created, its duties were given to the Scholarship Chair, and before a couple of years ago, it was also in charge of StudNerd, which we haven't done in awhile. Based on the bylaws it sounds to me like the Scholarship Chair used to do even more than that. Future Scholarship Chairs should be aware that there is a lot of room for growth in the position if they want to experiment with it (tracking the academic progress of the Brothers, organizing study skills sessions, setting up tutoring, etc).