The 2024-2025 year was one of the busiest yet for the Alpha Upsilon Phi Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, located on the Gainesville campus of the University of North Georgia. Our fall and spring inductions held early each semester served as regular kick-off events for our chapter, and for the ’24-25 academic year, we added 18 full and 17 probationary members. The other big event on our fall calendar was the annual Sigma Tau Delta Southern Regional Virtual Conference. This was another successful year of presentations with 32 students from eight universities, across four different time zones!
We also continued cultivating our ongoing partnership with Books for Keeps (BFK), a children’s literacy nonprofit based in Athens, GA; we hosted continuous book drives and participated in volunteer events held at the BFK warehouse and Athens-area schools. Along with BFK, our Community Engagement Liaison coordinated with our Book Drive and Little Free Library Coordinators to maintain our three Little Free Libraries and to collect books for our annual Blind Date with a Book event held in April 2025.
Our Community Engagement Liaison was also responsible for establishing our very first ongoing partnership with the local public libraries surrounding our campus—specifically the Hall County Library system. Our chapter members volunteered multiple days for the Friends of the Library annual book sale. We are very excited to carry this partnership into the 2025-2026 academic year and work with the libraries to offer even more community outreach opportunities for our chapter members.
We also continued our Common Reader Book Club for a third year with When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz. We held this event not only as a community-building opportunity but also to prepare our chapter members for Diaz’s talk at the International English Convention in Pittsburgh.
For the International Convention, we sent one of our largest ever group of students—fourteen in total—including ten paper presentations, two Research in the Round table hosts, two roundtable participants, and two volunteers. We were especially pleased by our large amount of Alumni participation, with five in attendance. Our members enjoyed four great days at the Convention and finished with two Convention Awards: Honorable Mention, LULAC Award, and Honorable Mention, Critical Essays: British Literature.
We closed the semester with our annual Scholars’ Night celebration, an event hosted by the Sigma Tau Delta chapter recognizing the achievements of members and English majors based on the Gainesville campus. At this event, we presented regalia and certificates to all graduates, recognized presenters and award winners from the past academic year, and installed our chapter officers for 2025-26.
In between these big events, we also held smaller events, such as Book Wrapping Parties, a Holiday Party for the Gainesville English Department, participation in Gainesville Campus’s Earth Day Celebration, and a post-convention Coffee Chat. We sold lots of our custom-roast coffee to raise money for scholarships and convention travel, even meeting (and exceeding) our “100 for 100” goal to celebrate Sigma Tau Delta’s Centennial Celebration.
One final event that we attended as a chapter was University of North Georgia Gainesville Campus’s Blue & Gold Engagement Awards. During this award ceremony, we were honored to accept the Student Organization of the Year award for 2024-2025, and one of our Chapter Advisors, Dr. Leigh Dillard, won Student Organization Advisor of the Year. These two awards were a great honor, and it proves how much care, enthusiasm, and community our chapter members and officers demonstrate in everything they do. We are honored to be the recipients of the Outstanding Chapter Award for the 2024-2025 year!
Sophia Jockell
Outstanding Chapter Award Recipient, 2024-2025
Alpha Upsilon Phi Chapter, Former Chapter President & Southern Student Representative
University of North Georgia, Gainesville, Gainesville, GA
Outstanding Chapter Award
Sigma Tau Delta’s Outstanding Chapter Award is designed to recognize local chapters that have exhibited outstanding motivation, creativity, and service in the preceding year. Award recipients will receive a check for up to $500 and a plaque. Winning chapters may also receive up to $350 in travel assistance for sending at least one student representative to the annual convention and bringing a chapter exhibit.
Eligibility
Any active chapter is eligible to apply for an Outstanding Chapter Award, but no chapter may receive an Outstanding Chapter Award in consecutive years. Active chapters are also eligible to apply for a Service Award, a Book Club Service Award, and/or a Chapter Service Project Grant and may use relevant information assembled for the Outstanding Chapter Award application when applying for one of these opportunities. Specific application requirements are posted with each award description.
How to Apply
Applications for the Outstanding Chapter Award are accepted through the AwardSpring platform June 22 – July 13, 2026, 4 p.m. CT.
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Internship Stipend
