Once you become a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, you may wonder how you should explain the significance of this honor to your friends and family, prospective new members of our organization, or potential employers. The members of O∆K’s Student Advisory Board composed the following series of “elevator speeches” addressing various elements of the member experience to be shared with current and prospective employers as well as with your professional colleagues.
In Defense of Honor (Societies) by Eileen Merberg, Executive Director, Alpha Lambda Delta, The Honor Society for First-Year Academic Success
The Five Pillars of Collegiate Life
O∆K is an organization that values leadership qualities found in a diverse array of fields. We are made up of such multi-faceted individuals—people with a penchant for guiding others in the areas of scholarship, athletics, campus and community service, communications, and the arts—because a cross-section of membership from the campus community strengthens our organization. Our members are the community leaders of tomorrow – people who would strengthen the workplace culture of your company and develop it to its highest potential.
The O∆K Key
The O∆K Key is the symbolic embodiment of our great organization. Everything on the key represents a major aspect of our organization’s history and mission. In the middle, the Greek letters representing Omicron Delta Kappa are listed. The 1914 on lower bar represents the year in which our honor society was founded at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. The five stars on the upper bar represent the five pillars of collegiate leadership celebrated by O∆K: scholarship, athletics, campus and community service, communications, and arts. These three elements are enclosed in a circle that represents the all-around nature of leadership celebrated by O∆K.
The Focus of O∆K
Omicron Delta Kappa (O∆K) is America’s oldest national honor society devoted to leadership and made up of members including student leaders, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni of colleges and universities in the United States. It is intentionally intergenerational. The organization seeks to recognize and bring together leaders of all five areas of campus life: scholarship, athletics, services, campus and community service, communications, and the arts.
The Value of Membership in O∆K
O∆K imparts to its members the honor and obligation to serve as exceptional leaders in the community. The organization provides a fantastic medium for leaders to meet and collaborate with each other to work for the betterment of not only our college campuses but for our surrounding communities as well. Currently, there are more than 300 circles, our term for chapters, across the nation. More specifically, my circle was involved in ______. I primarily worked on X, X, and X.
The last two sentences to be tailored by each O∆K member to fit the interview or professional setting.
