2007 CFEA / NIF Award Winners

Please click on the link above for a PDF listing of this year’s CFEA/NIF Award winners.

It is an honor and privilege to be elected to serve as president of the College Fraternity Editors Association for 2007-08. I am humbled by the “long, illustrious line” of truly remarkable and visionary editors, executives and communicators who have served in this capacity since our founding on December 1, 1923.

At the age of 26, Charles Duy Walker founded The Beta Theta Pi magazine. In his first edition, dated December 15, 1872, Walker remarked on the developing role of alumni. He wrote, “We take pride in their success in life, and look to them as our examples. They are bound to us and have the noble responsibility of setting such examples as may be worthy of our imitation.”

Worthy of our imitation. I continue to be amazed by the ongoing dedication and commitment of those who elect to serve their fraternal organization. Volunteers and staff professionals give countless hours and boundless energy to the building up of a Greek movement that is worthy of our predecessors.

What should we expect from one another as we set the course for the exciting year ahead?

From me, you can expect the strongest possible commitment to upholding CFEA as an organization worthy of your participation and support. In the days ahead, we will focus on:
- enhanced internal communications
- improved external partnerships, and
- continued focus on education and recognition

In the spirit of being an organization that is “indispensable to its members and the greater Greek community,” I have asked the Board to authorize the resources necessary to engage in an ongoing Strategic Planning Initiative that will provide us with a bright future “worthy of imitation” for years to come.

We are limited only by the depth of our collective imagination. We will need, and frankly, we will expect, your continued commitment as we move forward. While preserving our remarkable past, we will also be greatly enhancing our future . . . together.

Friends, this is OUR moment. We must always be cognizant of the example we set for those who will imitate us when we’ve long passed through this chapter in our lives.

Fraternally,

Thomas C. Olver, president

For those of you (me included) who were not able to attend this year’s meeting, I have uploaded the results from the annual survey.
You will notice that I included last year’s results for comparison.

Ben Welch
Kappa Psi
2006-07 Survey Chair

2007 Magazine Survey Results

2007 Technology Survey Results

Nine individuals from CFEA member organizations have been nominated for the CFEA Board of Directors for 2007-2008, including President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Past President and Director (4). Nominees will be interviewed by the Nominations Committee at or prior to the Annual Conference in Richmond and then a slate of candidates will be offered by the committee for consideration during the business sessions.

This document provides nominee information as submitted on the Nomination Form and is provided here so that you can get to know the nominees before arriving in Richmond.

Please refer to Article V of the CFEA Constitution and to the CFEA Handbook of Policies and Procedures for information about the nominations and election processes.

The CFEA Nominations Committee is comprised of the following:

• Shanda Gray, Delta Sigma Pi – Chair
• Judy Thorne, Kappa Delta
• Anne Fouss, Delta Gamma
• Nick Ziegler, Sigma Alpha Epsilon
• Chris Martz, Delta Tau Delta

If you are one of the many groups sending out bulk-emails to your members and wonder why your open rates continue to decline, there are two likely reasons.

The first is list fatigue. After receiving the same information on a regular schedule again and again, users begin to lose their enthusiasm. The more messages you send, the more likely they will begin to ignore them.

The more likely reason for declining open rates is a technological shift by the ISPs to set their email clients to block images by default. Gmail, MS Outlook 2003, AOL 9, Verizon, Comcast, MSN, and Earthlink all block images by default.

Why does this matter? Shari Worthington of telesian.com explains, “Because that’s how e-mail marketers track open rates. Either a main header graphic in the e-mail or a small one-pixel graphic in the bottom corner has a special URL that’s tracked for the number of times it’s hit. That tells you how many times the e-mail has been opened.”

Shari also reported that 34 percent of .edu domains, our primary audience, have strict blocking techniques that throw off your open rate numbers.