Have you heard about PTK at Oakton Community College? Well, if you haven’t, now you will! PTK stands for Phi Theta Kappa and is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious honor society serving two year colleges worldwide. Oakton’s Alpha Iota Phi chapter of PTK was established in 1984. Every year hundreds of students get nominated for their academic excellence (3.5 GPA or above) to this prestigious honor society.

PTK at Oakton has big goals for this year, and is working hard to reach them. Nine officers of the chapter started in early August to plan the fall semester. This year’s biggest goal is to increase Oakton’s chapter level from a 3-star chapter to a 4 or 5 star chapter. The higher the chapter star level (max 5) the more involved the organization is at that particular college. Officers are working hard towards various projects and events, and collaborating with other colleges in Illinois in order to help us reach this level on an international scale.

The biggest projects PTK is working on are the College Project and Honors in Action Project. With the continually dropping enrollment rates at Oakton, PTK is focussing on College Completion in efforts to discover the obstacles of completing a 2-year college degree or certificate that face students, and find solutions for them. Their Honors in Action project theme this year is Visions of Justice, where PTK students are researching and analyzing ways in which to better  integrate immigrants into our society.

This Fall semester, PTK has already organized a resume workshop, bake sales to support Kerala Flood in India, and a collaboration with the “Be The Match” national bone marrow donor registry to increase participation and awareness of the importance of signing up for the registry. PTK is also hosting an activity titled “Donut-Stress” during #studybreakfast, a stress relief breakfast and tutoring event on Wednesday, November 28th. The activity will be centered around reliving students stress with donuts in various forms.

The chapter also attended a regional Illinois Honors Institute and Leadership Conference in Moraine Valley Community College, where PTK officers had a chance to know twenty five other chapters from Illinois community colleges, exchange ideas, participate in seminars and workshops, learn more about PTK and make new friends. Alpha Iota Phi also won a social media contest #PTKILstrong where each college was to post an image of their officer team and explain what the image shows about their chapter. Our submission stated, “We want to display our support for each other, which empowers us to reach heights we couldn’t alone, and a pyramid is a perfect way to symbolize this power and unity. We are a diverse group of student leaders who engages our local communities. Currently we are collaborating with “Be the Match” to increase awareness and participation in the national bone marrow registry in support of one of our members (Jack). WE are PTK!” Participating PTK officers were recognized at Oakton’s Board of Trustees meeting the following week, and were described as a family by the Student Trustee and PTK officer, Jack TImperley. PTK has many exciting projects and events to look forward to this semester and has already developed some big plans for the spring 2019 semester. This year’s induction ceremony for new invited members will be held on November 15th 6:30PM.