After nearly three years of task force and committee meetings and recommendations, Miami University’s Greek community is setting out to raise its standards with the implementation of its new Community Advancement Program.

According to Jennifer Levering, director of the Cliff Alexander Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, the Fraternity and Sorority Coalition Assessment Project came to campus in 2009, and recommended that Miami’s Greek community develop shared community standards.

Several committees were formed following those recommendations, and the Cliff Alexander office took recommendations from these various task forces and merged them with the Miami’s already-existing Greek awards program to develop the Community Advancement Program.

Levering said the new program more clearly defines standards that Greek chapters have already had in place, as well as implements new higher expectations.

“We just tried to create programs that chapters are already doing so that they would get current recognition…and also set some higher expectations to raise the bar of what we hope fraternities and sororities will do on our campus,” Levering said.

According to Levering, the new program establishes set guidelines for the various fraternities and sororities at Miami to all follow and will act as an assessment tool.

“It allows students and chapters to have a roadmap for what the expectations are to be a fraternity or sorority on campus,” Levering said. “They get guidelines and road maps form their national organizations but this gives us a way as a campus to say ‘if you’re a fraternity or a sorority, this is what we hope you will do.’”

According to senior Alanah Raykovich, vice president of public relations of Miami’s Panhellenic Association, the new program is made up of chapter plans, chapter programs, and data collection. Data collection consists of keeping updated rosters and records, chapter programs consist of programs and events the chapters are required to put on and chapter plans are individualized strategies for chapters to hold themselves accountable to certain standards, Raykovich said.

According to Raykovich, the chapter plan is an important aspect of the new program.

“[The chapter plan is] individualized within the chapter, but they have to let us know that they’ve thought about this and they’ve thought about accountability on an individual basis.”

While there have been other standards laid out for Miami’s Greek community in the past, Raykovich said the Community Advancement Program is more comprehensive.

“There have been minimum standards to meet before as well, but these are definitely more detailed and more encompassing, because it reaches out to other aspects that I don’t think our community has really addressed before,” Raykovich said.

Some of these new aspects being addressed include an Oxford immersion program for second-year students, as well as the requirement that 50 percent of a chapter must be involved in another student organization on campus, Raykovich said.

According to Quinton Heisler, vice president of public relations for Miami’s Interfraternity Council (IFC), the Community Advancement Program brings a sense of community to Miami’s various Greek organizations.

“The community [advancement] program I think is important because it’s more about the global Greek community as opposed to just, ‘I’m a Chi-O, I’m a Delt, I’m a DG,’” Heisler said. “It’s about, ‘I’m a Greek.’”

According to Raykovich, the Community Advancement Program will help develop an improved image of Miami’s Greek community.

“The image of Miami Greek life obviously stands for some improvement, we’re not going to pretend like it doesn’t,” Raykovich said. “I think that this program is a great way to build off of things that have maybe happened in the past that have been less fortunate, and use those as a way to catapult ourselves into a new idea and a new way of thinking, because things need to change, and our office is definitely embracing that and trying to be innovative and creative.”