Delta Upsilon Leadership Institute 1997

This page provides information & pictures of the Delta Upsilon Leadership Institute held this past July at the Marriott Camelback Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona. I attended the institute as the alumnus delegate for the Louisville Chapter (Louisville '95). The pictures I have are someone limited and more on the social end, as my first role of film accidently roasted when left out in the rental car in the daytime heat.

Day One, Thursday 7/24/97

After a morning of travel, I arrived at Phoenix International Airport. For a rental car, I was able to snag a 1997 Camero Convertible for $10 over the price of a compact, and it came in handy with the hot weather. On the left is a nice view (somewhat distorted) of the City of Louisville & the Ohio River upon take-off, in the middle is arrival at Phoenix, and to right the wonderful rental car I got (ok, it did have 16,000 miles on it).

After a bit of a mix-up in rooms, I settled down in my room shared with Thomas Hansen, Iowa State '79. From 6-8:30pm we had our opening banquet with the great Dr. Will S. Keim (Pacific '75) speaking. Afterwards as a member of the Accreditation Team along with Dan Kniss & Kelly Sundburg, had the opportunity to meet with three different chapters (Calgary, Illinois, and Washington). I was extremely impressed with the Washington scholarship program, but all three chapters had some great strengths. This was the first time the Accreditation Team has met and reviewed chapters, and I really believe the process to be a great asset to Delta Upsilon. As with anything new, a few things do need to be ironed out with the process including more time for each accreditation meeting.

After a late night on Thursday, I took the morning off and went into town with some fellow brothers from Canada. We walked around Mill Street in Tempe, and had a look at SunDevil Stadium on the Arizona State University Campus.

Friday afternoon things heated up at about 1:30pm (no pun intended) with the Alcohol-Free Housing Breakout Session. A lot of opinions were expressed, but at the same time a lot of valuable input was received as well as many different viewpoints on this issue. I personally don't think there is an easy answer to the issue, but it needs addressing as a result of other well known national fraternities making the move to have alcohol-free housing by the year 2000.

Friday evening the Delta U Bar-B-Que was held in which I got to meet several brothers I haven't seen since Leadership Institute 1995 in Banff, Alberta, Canada. After the Bab-B-Que I went into town with a Canadian brother I knew from LI 1995 & with extra room in the Camero (back seat) offered a ride to a couple of other brothers.

Above to the left is the Delta-U BBQ, in the middle (pictured from left to right) is Vedesto Valdez, Jin Chio '00, and Zak Eckles '99 (all of Louisville), and then to the far right I got caught in a picture (Steve Richardson, Louisville '95).

Saturday got off to a good start with the Assembly of Trustees where I had the honor to represent Louisville as the Alumni Delegate (Even though most of the undergraduates either went tubing down the Salt River or helping with a community service project Saturday morning).

The afternoon brought along several excellent Alumni educational sessions which I attended, while there were some great educational sessions for the undergraduate chapter hosted by brothers Tom Durein, Tom Hansen, Mike Chaplin, Phil Schott, and others.

To close the evening we had the Grand Banquet from 7-9pm, which included the initiation of new candidates for membership into our Brotherhood! In the Chair for the Diffusion of Liberal Culture, we had a performance from Concert Pianists Mark Anderson (San Jose '86) and Tamriko Siprashvili.

As the last night in Scottsdale, I took my fellow Louisville brothers into Tempe for the evening.

To the left & middle are pictures of the car, and to the right is "Fat Tuesdays" on Mill Street, which is the main drag in Tempe, Arizona. Below I have one last picture from Scottsdale (tried to get a group picture) of brothers in the pool late Saturday night having a cold one and enjoying the water (myself I pulled a late one and stayed in the pool as well).

This was probably the longest day of them all (for me at least). I was up a bit late Sunday and was running late to the airport, only to find my flight on United to Chicago O'Hare delayed because of Thunderstroms. My fellow brothers from Louisville got a non-stop flight back later in the day that was apparently rough as well. After the delay, we boarded a 727-200 for a somewhat turbulant flight to Chicago. As we reached the St. Louis area we started to circle as O'Hare was closed because of a Tornado Sighting in Aurora where the Chicago Center ATC operates. I had the opportunity to listen to ATC and apparently our flight was almost diverted, but we made it into Chicago late.

My connecting flight was late as well, but after the turbulant flight from Phoenix the following was a welcome site to see:

So, to make a long story short I made it back about 6 hours late in the wee hours on the morning, but I made it!

Now we have Leadership Institute 1998 to look forward to in Jacksonville, Florida.

In regards to this page, if anyone has comments or suggestions please email them to me at [email protected] - I have an email icon below. In regards to pictures from Leadership Institute 1997, If anyone has any pictures they would like to see added to this site you may either send me scanned copies via E-Mail, or send the originals to the following address and I will return them to you after scanning; To ensure they do not get lost in the mail, I suggest certified mail.

Steve Richardson, P.O. Box 970, Jeffersonville, Indiana 47131-0970

Photographs will be returned via certified mail in a protective mailer.

I hope you enjoyed the page, and as always comments or suggestions are welcome at [email protected] ... I highly suggest that you do check out Duncan's Greek Pages for spam-free discussion, valuable greek documents, chat, and other items of interest. Duncan McRae is a Lambda Chi Alpha from the University of Western Ontario and has put a lot of hard work and effort into designing a web page for greek discussion as the newsgroups are barely usable thanks to commecial mail and spam that is appearing through-out the Internet.

My home page is linked below, but I will be re-doing it soon with a focus on a few different areas, a) aviation b) skiing & ski resorts c) travel to tropical destinations (scuba diving & snorkelling), and d) a section for everything else. Right now there are some great pictures up and a link to Fall/Spring break pictures - but that page is not finished yet.

Hot Links

Delta Upsilon International Headquarters
Delta Upsilon - University of Louisville Chapter
My personal homepage (Steve Richardson, Louisville '95)
Duncan's Greek Pages (Spam-Free greek discussion, documents, and chat)

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