Dear Alpha Epsilon Officers, Advisers and Members:

Greetings from the National Executive Committee of Alpha Epsilon! We hope that your summer has been productive and restful. Now that the school year has begun, we wanted to make you aware of some of the changes at the national level and how they pertain to your local chapters. We als want to thank chapters who participated in our national meeting. The feedback from the meeting was great and hopefully some of the items discussed in this newsletter will address those issues.

1. Outstanding Chapter Awards
Congratulations to the University of Illinois for winning the $400, first place award, and to Purdue University for taking the $250, second place award. You will be able to look to our new website, alpha-epsilon.org, for more details about the award winning chapters, by the end of this month. Do not forget that there is also an award for the MOST IMPROVED chapter in the amount of $200. In addition, the winning chapter from last school year will be ineligible for this year's competition.

2. New Alpha Epsilon Website: alpha-epsilon.org
At the last national meeting, we voted to buy a new domain name and have our website slightly modified. The page is currently under construction and should be finished by the end of the month. We would like to include chapter web pages as links, so if your chapter has a site, please send the web address to Keli Christopher at kchristo@uiuc.edu.
We'd like to thank the Gamma Beta Chapter at the University of Florida for providing the key design used on the web site and our new stationary!

3. Initiation and Certificates
For the past several years we have had problems with chapters requesting certificates and initiating members without the national secretary/treasurer ever receiving the initiates' names or dues. The following is a new procedure for the membership intake process, which will hopefully reduce the problems we've been having.

1. Begin planning for the initiation at least a month before it is scheduled.
2. Request names of eligible candidates.
3. Send candidates a letter of invitation to join your chapter.
4. Obtain confirmation of those accepting your invitation.
5. Fax a copy of the dues payment (check(s) or request for a university check), to Keli Christopher at (217)244-0323, at least 2 weeks prior to your initiation.
6. Send the one-time national dues ($10 per initiate) and the names of the initiates to Richard Willoughby (address given below). Please do this within a month of the initiation.

Please feel free to send us your questions, suggestions, and concerns. We are looking forward to a productive year and we wish all of you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

National Executive Committee of Alpha Epsilon

Keli Christopher
338 Agricultural Engineering Sciences Building
1304 W. Pennsylvania Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
Ph: 217-244-2862
Fax: 217-244-0323
Email:kchristo@.uiuc.edu

Kelsi Bracmort
107A-1
1146 Agricultural & Biological Engineering Building
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1146
Ph: 765-494-1196
Fax: 765-496-3816
E-mail: bracmort@ecn.purdue.edu

Richard Willoughby
P.O. Box 207
Guthrie, OK 73044
Ph: 405-282-4729
Email: rwilloug@ditchwitch.com