Q & A time with Alpha Chapter Adviser David Goldschmidt and RPI President Martin Schmidt
During the fall, Alpha Chapter Adviser Dr. David Goldschmidt ’94 (A1364) (right) joined RPI President Martin A. Schmidt ’81, Ph.D. (left) for a conversation about RPI’s Greek life landscape and the value of alumni involvement. The two discussed the benefits of fraternity engagement, campus housing options, and more.
November 2024 Theta Xi RPI Forum (full Q&A)
Dr. Goldschmidt: What is your perspective on the current economic pressures on Greek organizations and their members?
Pres. Schmidt: From the perspective of having been at MIT for 41 years and watching Greek life there, one of my observations is the interest in Greek life, I think, ebbs and flows with generations. And I saw that even with my own sons, in terms of their interests or not in pursuing Greek life. So I think, but when it ebbs, that could be financially existential for the fraternity. And I saw situations at MIT where in order to keep the beds full, in order to kind of make the numbers work effectively, they were renting out rooms. And the challenge that happened in that situation was the people that were living in the house weren’t really committed to the mission of the house, so their interest isn’t necessarily following rules and so on so forth. So I think the biggest challenge is maintaining a stable population, and ideally a population that’s larger than the size of the house, so that you never get in that downslope. And I think the important thing there, that is to get there, is to really be focused on what kind of students are you trying to attract, I’m not saying that this has to be that way, but I do think it’s really interesting to notice what RSE has done by basically saying, hey, we want to rebrand ourselves around entrepreneurship, and we want to attract students that are interested in that. So it’s the extent to which there’s an identity; I think you have a better shot at attracting students that want to be affiliated with that identity.
Dr. Goldschmidt: Next question relates to Arch. So, you previously spoke on how the Arch program relates to Greek life and RPI. Have there been any further developments in the discussion on students living in Greek housing during the Arch summer semester?
Pres. Schmidt: I think there’s an active conversation about that. And I think you’re in the same boat we are, which is we need to fill our beds, but that’s not where I want us to be. So, I think we just have to figure out a way to climb that to get to that point so it’s not financially existential to either one of us. Personally, I think we should be supportive of that. One of the things we have done is, for some of the fraternities that are sort of coming out of a suspension or whatever, and they’re trying to refill it; it’s very tough on them if, all of a sudden, that sophomore class—so, we have granted exceptions in those situations, But I’d like to see us get to a different spot than where are.
Dr. Goldschmidt: And that makes sense. I mean, mentioning boarders, like in the past, we would have in our chapter house over the summers, a couple brothers living there. But also, just not randoms off this street, but just unaffiliated people. So that became harder with Arch, certainly, with a smaller subset of people there. And as you say, it takes away from the, I guess, the core, the feel of actually living there with your brothers, with your sisters.
[Editor’s note: An RPI policy update following this discussion now allows fraternity and sorority chapter members to reside in their respective chapter houses during the summer Arch semester.]
Pres. Schmidt: It’s really interesting. Because a persistent question the first year I was here was, “Are you going to eliminate Arch?” I said, no, not yet, I need to wrap my head around it. But the more I look at it, the more I really like it. But I also recognize that it’s not for everybody. But the kind of things we’re seeing—I’ll give you an example we were just reviewing this earlier this week. There was a survey out recently that has indicated that a lot of employers are shying away from hiring fresh out of college graduates, feeling like there’s just personal attributes that they don’t like in this generation, and they’d rather have those people mature in somebody else’s. And a lot of it is developing those professional work habits. So I think what we’re seeing, and when you look at the employee… We survey the employers halfway through their Archway and at the end, and the survey results when they’re asked to rank RPI students versus other co-op students or intern students, the RPI students stand out in terms of how they’re ranked. Getting that work experience before you’re on the job market, I really think for the right student, Arch can be a tremendous career booster, so I’m all in on that, but it’s also a case that it’s not for everyone. If you’re a two-season athlete, you can’t make it work. So, we try to be more accommodating in terms of how we flex there. But as we’re talking, it strikes me one of the benefits of Arch to the fraternities is you can actually fill the beds 12 months of the year. And I know that there’s also been concern about it doesn’t really square with the leadership development model for the fraternities, and I think to the extent to which one could rethink that, possibly.
Dr. Goldschmidt: And that’s been obviously part of the discussions we had a few years ago when Arch first came about. Because our chapter house, anyways, we tend to have, aside from the treasurer, for a while, we tend to just have semesterly president, vice president, etc. I think now the president is also a year-long position, so we want that sort of stability. And if you’re talking fall-spring, it makes sense. But then if that individual goes on, I guess you know that’s a whole problem with Arch.
Editor’s note: Dr. Goldschmidt shared that Alpha Chapter recently moved two a one-year presidency that spans January to December of each year.
Dr. Goldschmidt: So, the third question in this topic is, essentially, how do you think RPI and Greek organizations could partner? What else can we do to make Greek life more economical, with a focus on that at a time when undergraduate are facing heavy financial burdens?
Pres. Schmidt: I’d love to see you guys able to build these houses or size the house to the appropriate market, because I think that makes you guys healthy. I firmly believe that a supportive living environment is net good for the student. So, when you have that kind of healthy living group, be it a fraternity or sorority or some other affiliation, and it’s working, well… I mean, when you think about all the stresses on students and concerns about mental health and whatnot, having that kind of supportive environment is really important. So, in that respect, to the extent to which we can strengthen that living system, I think it’s in all of our best interests. But I also say, because this comes up around in a couple different contexts, that you’re not going to have a healthy fraternity/sorority system without a healthy University. So, if we don’t have enough financial aid support to attract students to come to RPI, there’s nobody to go to your fraternities and sororities. I think there’s a mutual dependency there, which has a financial component to it. And so, I think it comes back to the Arch summer, which is we just need to figure out a way to not put ourselves in competition with each other from a financial perspective, so that we’re aligned, and I think we’ll get there. But right now, the finances of this institution are challenging, and a lot of what we’re working towards with our strategic plan is, how do we move ourselves to a more financially resilient position?
Dr. Goldschmidt: So, I suppose you want to see the number of students doing the Arch summer to increase, certainly. Do you see that heading that direction? What other ideas could any of us do as faculty?
Pres. Schmidt: I guess what I would say is two things. One is, rather than the number of students in the summer increasing, let’s just make sure that every student gets that experiential learning piece. And if they’re a two-semester athlete, they can only do it in the summer, that should be it. And we’ve also had students who’ve had phenomenal internships at Apple, but they’re only in the summer. So, why would you not let that happen? So, I’m a little bit agnostic as to what percent of the class should stick around in the summer. I want it to be healthy enough that we can offer a full slate of courses and not have classes half empty, although it’s interesting, a number of students have said to me that one thing they like about Arch is the classes are smaller, and so the interaction with the faculty and lecturers are better. So, that’s the way I would think about that question. But I do think one of the things that is becoming apparent to me is we don’t market our strengths. I’ll give you two examples. One is when you look at these studies that look at earnings 10 years after entering the university, RPI graduates have twice the national average of graduates of four-year colleges in terms of their earnings 10 years out. And CS is probably more than that. So, when people talk about ROI, we can stack up how we do when they’re potentially coming to a place like RPI or somewhere else. If you look at students being able to be placed into top graduate programs in the country, there’s a ranking for that now where somebody actually went and looked at what said, what are the top Ph.D. programs in biology or whatever, and then said, “The Ph.D. students in those programs, where do they get the bachelor degree?” And then they normalize it by, “How many biology bachelor’s degrees did that university graduate in a year?” And then rank them like, “What percentage of their students are getting into these top programs?” And if you just take engineering as an example, we rank sixth in the nation in terms of getting our bachelor’s degree engineers into top engineering Ph.D. programs, which puts us ahead of Stanford, Harvard, Georgia Tech, I think. It’s pretty impressive. What I say is, let’s talk about what do we think is valuable about an RPI education, and in a world of big data and analytics, we can actually run our own rankings. Not only is that good at promoting what’s great about RPI, but it’s also good in terms of, we should manage to that. If we look at them saying we’re not where we want to be, well, what are the things we should do? I think, to the extent to which Arch produces graduates who get better jobs, or graduates who have greater confidence in themselves and so on and so forth, we can measure that and promote it. And I think that has a net positive benefit for all of us in terms of bringing students that are excited to be here. I think one of our challenges is filling the class in, with demographic cliffs and all that. We need to get better at marketing the university.
Dr. Goldschmidt: That makes sense, and it’s interesting to hear. That does lead into our next topic area of Greek life experience—the mentoring, the networking, involved with Theta Xi, and I’m sure many houses have an alumni network of people out there. So, the first question in this topic is, how can fraternities and sororities work to make themselves more attractive options to students who may be uncertain about joining in the Greek life experience?
Pres. Schmidt: I think the alumni network is a critical one in several dimensions. One is, we have the Alumni Fraternity and Sorority Council, which I think is a is a brilliant thing in the sense of, it has us, the administration, talking to alumni of fraternities and sororities in a way that is an anticipatory engagement around if we want to change this policy, or maybe we want to discuss what would be the sanctions if something like this happened? Because it’ll happen, and we don’t want to be arguing over what the sanction is, what we really should be focused on is how do we pick this entity back up? I often use the term co-parenting, because if the parents aren’t aligned, the kid’s in trouble. So I think that alumni network that’s supportive of the house and the students in it, partnering with the administration is really great. But the other thing I would say is that, with the board’s permission, I’m making very substantial investments in the advancement and alumni office here. When I arrived here, there were 36 people in that office. We’re now close to 70. But just to put it in context, we have about 75% of the living alumni that MIT has. So we have 110,000 living alumni. MIT is like 140,000. This equivalent function at MIT has somewhere between 300 to 500 people. In order to develop relationships with your alumni, you need people here that are curating that. And so, in addition to what you all are able to do through your network, we’re trying to broaden that so we have a deep network. For example, I was in Palo Alto a week ago. We have, I’d say, three dozen RPI alumni that are in the C level of major company. I mean, RJ Scaringe was here, he’s the founder and CEO of Rivian, and there’s a person in a leadership role in Salesforce, you know, all these companies, I got a dozen of them together for dinner last week. Half of them didn’t know each other, and didn’t know they were alumni. I was sitting with a venture capitalist over lunch while I was out there, and this person was an alumnus, and he said, “Yeah, I’ve been working with some guy for a couple of years, and I just found out two weeks ago, he went to RPI.” We don’t do enough to connect the alumni and then connect our current students to the alumni, so that, if I’m thinking I want to go to work at Apple, well, can I look up a database and say who’s working at Apple, and is that person on receive for a message for me? Because I think the alumni, by and large, and RJ Scaringe said, “If I get an email from somebody who says they’re from RPI, I’m much more inclined to respond to the email than if it’s just a random.” So, I think what you guys do naturally, we just want to broaden it so it’s the whole institution.
Dr. Goldschmidt: I personally enjoy going to the career fairs, because you see the recent alumni, CS students, Theta Xi brothers. And it’s always, “Oh, I haven’t seen you in a decade!” That connection is so strong.
Pres. Schmidt: The other thing was, we had the bicentennial reunion weekend, and something fascinating happened. Last year, we had 700 people registered for the reunion weekend. This year, we had 2,157, something like that. Triple. So, what happened was, I think a lot of affinity groups, principally sororities and fraternities, decided they were going to do their regular reunion weekend, which sometimes they don’t even do it in Troy, they decided they wanted to do it during the main reunion, because we promised them there’d be fun stuff like a drone show. So, they started calling advancement and alumni relations and saying, “Hey, can you help us find a space where we do this or that?” And the group did a great job of facilitating that, which was not easy, because all of a sudden it was, “Where are the hotel rooms?” And when those numbers went up, all of a sudden, we were like, shoot, I’m selling out venues, and there’s not enough big rooms in the Hilton Garden Inn for everybody. But I talked to a lot of people that weekend, and they loved it because we didn’t counter program, we basically built the program and said these are the main events that we think you would enjoy being at. These are the times when, if you guys want to have a dinner, there’s nothing that you’re going to regret missing over that. And they said to me, they always love getting together with fraternity brothers, but they also ran into all these people from their class that they hadn’t seen in ages. So I’m really hopeful that we can get to a point where people are thinking about when their affinity group holds this reunion that they think about doing it when we have the major reunion, just you get that amplifying effect.
Dr. Goldschmidt: Yeah, communication obviously is key there. So speaking of alumni engagement, how would you suggest organizations at RPI work together to keep alumni more engaged, and particularly with undergraduate chapter events at RPI?
Pres. Schmidt: One of the things that’s kind of fun to do that we’ve been doing with these 24-hour challenges, we did it through the athletes. So, our athletic director matched up teams based on the size of their alumni base. So, you could take men’s and women’s lacrosse, and there was a challenge, like, whoever got more individual donations or dollar number of donations had access an extra $1,000, and stuff like that. It created this really interesting competition, and I think that would be kind of fun to run something like that, like, who would you consider to be your competitive fraternity? And let’s match up those alumni bases. It’s not transformative money, but I think it’s a way of getting people in the game, and then that brings resources.
Dr. Goldschmidt: I appreciate that, and I know something we’ve looked for for a while on the alumni board is a way to donate directly on the RPI site, choose which fraternity or sorority or Greek life in general. It was awesome to see that go live.
Pres. Schmidt: And the only thing I’ve heard on that is some people grumble and say, “Well, why is RPI taking 10%?” I said, “Well, you know, think of it like a tip.” But the reality is, when you look at the staff that we have to support the alumni fraternity system, this is not an insignificant number of people that work in that office. And so, being able to offset some of that cost.
Dr. Goldschmidt: So maybe one last question related to alumni: How do you think significant alumni support benefits the future of fraternities and sororities on campus in general?
Pres. Schmidt: I hinted at this earlier, and this will be as we roll out our strategic plan towards the end of the calendar year; there’s an underpinning to our strategy for the next decade, which is really to move RPI to a more financially resilient position. And that has several components, one is growing sponsored research, because that can be meaningful revenue that offsets. And, for example, because of the indirect cost structure, you can pick up expenses that we might otherwise be burdening the libraries and things like that, fixing the physical plan, alumni engagement, and so driving towards more philanthropy from alumni is another one. But coupled back to that is, we’re just in a situation where the cost of higher education is a big concern for everybody. And it’s not like we’re making money, because, especially from a STEM centric institution, it’s expensive to deliver the kind of education we deliver, whether it’s laboratories or quantum computers and whatnot, right? But still, we need to figure out a way to make it more affordable, and scholarships are a logical thing. So, the extent to which we can think about how we align around lowering the cost of education for a student coming to RPI, is there a way to raise scholarships with first preference to a student who’s going to be in a fraternity or sorority. That’s a natural alignment there. That’s a half-baked idea, but maybe there’s a way to think about, if the fraternities and sororities through the giving that you’re pursuing, say we’re going to allocate some of that towards scholarships.
Dr. Goldschmidt: And it may be second, third, or fourth-year students, right? Because we don’t know with the recruitment calendar.
Pres. Schmidt: You could imagine how that might drive interest in your house.
Dr. Goldschmidt: One of the events I sort of alluded to earlier that we have is, whether it’s just with brothers or with potential new members, going over their resume in a workshop. And then the catch is, we have the alumni network, so consider joining. I’m sure other houses, other chapters, use a similar approach. So correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve mentioned how today’s undergraduates seem more mutually supportive of one another—how do you think RPI can keep promoting that collaboration between members?
Pres. Schmidt: It really was striking to me when I arrived and met with a lot of students. I had no idea what I Persist was until I learned about it and the fact that we have juniors and seniors volunteering time to mentor and tutor first year students in some of these core subjects. And the impact of it is not only that they’re getting tutoring, but it’s that first-year students, probably overwhelmed, can see somebody who can say, “I know what you’re going through. I went through it. You’ll get through it.” That kind of support, I don’t feel it existed in the past. If you go way back, you talk to alumni from the ’60s and early ’70s—I don’t remember this as a student—but they often talk about, “Look to your left, look to your right. It’s a war.” And I think that’s not the culture we have today. It’s much more a culture of collaboration and support. I had a student said to me once in my listening tour, she said to me something to the effect of, “My first year, I walked into the McNeil room, and there was this nerdy looking student working on something, and there was this big, burly football player who was advising them.” Where I’m going with this is, what you wouldn’t want is to have the fraternities and sororities be insular elements. I think it was great in our day when you had GM week, and a lot of the intramural competition was driven by the fraternities and sororities, so I think that’s kind of healthy competition. But I also think that the living groups and the athletes are tremendous ambassadors for RPI, particularly in the community, in the volunteer work they do. So I think where you can help a lot is being of the community, either on campus or in Troy. I think that’s just a net positive.
Dr. Goldschmidt: So one last question, for your vision in the next 10 years, what do you anticipate Greek life to look like? Do you have any last words on key goals or challenges?
Pres. Schmidt: What I would love to see is every fraternity or sorority, every independent living group, is financially healthy. That, to me, that means you’re filling your beds, and you have plenty of folks that are interested in being part of that community and that it’s a living environment that’s complimentary to their academic experience.