We began this journey early with proposed themes from the prior officer team. Following the training at the July Summer Institute at Washington University, the new officer team had a plan for disseminating information to the members, gaining interest and creating a committee, but it was not that easy.
Months in to the process, little was accomplished. Our chapter experienced incivility first-hand as we impeached our elected Hallmark Secretary who was unreliable, unresponsive, and disrespectful. Fortunately, something good came from the experience. From that exercise came the development of one driven member then serving as Fellowship Chair the opportunity to lead the Honors in Action project. This also created an opening for another member to take a leadership role as Fellowship chair to keep our chapter united. At first, there was some animosity between the impeached officer and our newly elected Hallmark Secretary but we quickly forged ahead and got to work.
Of the 10 themes, Theme 1 was the front-runner but we opened it up to members and several others were submitted for consideration. Through a vote, we agreed on Theme 1: It's All in the Mind Psychology and Competition. The first order of business was to have members explore the theme and present ideas for the question. From the many ideas came an apparent interest in the trending issue of bullying and incivility and how it related to competition. Once we had a new Hallmark Secretary in place, we assembled a committee. Via social media, we set up a secret page where we had 19 committee members engaging in dialogue and uploading their research findings and other related information. This was the best way to promote inclusion and make is possible for geographically challenged members and those with jobs and families to share with the group at times most convenient for them. At times, we were overwhelmed and felt we were going in too many different directions. Thankfully, we were able to find our focus.
After months of research and sorting through the many contexts of bullying, we discovered incivility existed not only in school age children but at all ages. There was also a considerable amount of research about workplace incivility. Understanding that we had to address a question and show action, and little time left to implement a project, we did not give up. We came together one snowy Sunday evening in fellowship at an officer’s home and discussed ideas for accomplishing the ‘action’ part of the project but we had no idea what that was just yet. This led us to conduct our own research through a survey to determine the extent to which awareness of bullying and incivility existed within our own personal networks. Although our sampling was small, we were able to ascertain that there was a high awareness of the issue and a need for more advocacy. To that end, we determined the action component of our project.
The sources cited for this project covered the following subjects: 1) The...