the Informer

Barney School establishes chapter of national business organization.

The Barney School of Business recently installed their newest chapter of Beta Alpha Psi which contains 77 members ranging from undergrad and grad students, alumni and faculty. Courtesy of Prof. Pamela Weaver

The Barney School of Business recently installed their new chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, a national business organization.

In the world of business, innovation is the key to success whether designing a new product or forming a new organization at a college campus. Such is the case with Beta Alpha Psi.

Historically an honors organization for accounting, finance, and information systems students nationwide that excel in their chosen major, the chapter at the University of Hartford is the fourth chapter in the state of Connecticut. 77 members, students, alumni, and faculty, were officially inducted into the fraternity Thursday night in a ceremony at the 1877 club after a successful petitioning process that began in December of 2009 to have the chapter recognized at the national level.

“You have to go through a two-year petitioning period where you in effect form the chapter and then you have to do all these different activities,” said Professor Carl Smith, “after two years they come and evaluate you.”

Beta Alpha Psi has three faculty co-advisors from the Barney School of Business that oversee the activities conducted by the fraternity: Michelle Bertolini, Smith and Donald Warren.

An interesting fact about the chapter at the University is the level of membership among the graduate students at the Barney School. This is reflected in the current setup of Beta Alpha Psi’s executive board of students, which consists of two co-presidents that are at the undergrad and graduate levels. Other board positions are also filled by undergrad and graduate students.

“Other chapters liked our model,” said Warren. “The fact that we use co-presidents with one for the graduate and one for the undergraduate because I don’t think anybody ever thought of that before.”

The graduate student members of the Barney School’s chapter of Beta Alpha Psi make up 40 percent of the student membership. This is a unique characteristic not just on campus, but also at the state and national levels for Beta Alpha Psi.

“We’re one of the few chapters that have successfully mixed both grad and undergrad,” said Smith. “What we’re finding is we’re rewriting some of the policies at the national level because they were definitely undergraduate centric.”

“What happens at a lot of universities is that they’ll have an undergraduate Beta Alpha Psi and then when the students move to graduate level, they kind of drift off,” said Warren. “We keep them involved and I think one of the ways we keep them involved is that we have a co-president from the graduate program.”

In addition to a strong involvement from graduate students at the Barney School, there are other ways this chapter of Beta Alpha Psi has set itself apart from chapters formed at other schools in the past.

While only one service event a year is mandatory for the organization at the national level, the Barney School chapter has done two or three in a single year. The chapter members have also utilized the current multimedia technology available at the Barney School to have meetings with other Beta Alpha Psi chapters at other schools without ever leaving the University.

“It’s a major milestone for the Barney School of Business and for the accounting department to be installing a Beta Alpha Psi chapter,” said Warren.