BGLOs should have paid field staff

Provide Field Staff by Dr. Gregory S. Parks

White fraternities and sororities often have field staff that travel the country, advising their chapters. This is a great idea for organizations that can afford it. I can only assume that there are 2 BGLOs that could do this. For the other BGLO, I’d suggest drawing upon a team of members who are student affairs personnel to serve as remote/virtual advisors. Let’s use my fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, as an example. I know of around 20-30 Alphas who work in student affairs. Say 15 of them served as virtual advisors. Each could pick a group of specific issues that would be their specialty. If a Greek Affairs advisor had an issue with a chapter of Alpha and needed help resolving it, they could email the Alpha virtual advisors. The request could then be assigned to the brother who has a specialty in that area, and within 24 hours, he would respond with his recommendations. Proactively, Alpha could periodically—say once a month—run a report on problem chapters (e.g., those who have failed to submit required paperwork to the organization, those with poor chapter g.p.a.s, those where brothers are not graduating in a timely fashion). The remote advisors would then seek to ascertain what the purported issues are and work with the chapters to resolve the issue or issues.