Here is my $0.02 since I am part of the inaugural class at South University...
First of all, I am pretty adamant that being involved in SGA sucks no matter where you go. You are the liason for the class to the faculty. What is the sense of accomplishment in that? Whooptie doo. You changed a test date for the class. That's great to remember when you get old. (Sorry Fairyofsong!)
I, for one, am involved in many different things. I don't do it to put it on my CV, rather I do it because I love to do it. I am part of the founding executive committee for our APhA-ASP chapter. Anyone that is familiar with APhA-ASP, especially Region 3 (Southeast Schools), will tell you no other new new school has accomplished the amount of things we have accomplished in two years, and it is something I am very proud of. It can be done if you have the right people and the desire is there. During our first year, we had only 24 members. We didn't really do a whole lot because it takes a good 7-12 months to plan for events. Our second year, we increased our membership to 49 members, had 7 different ACTIVE committees, and got our class involved in events like Operation Diabetes, Immunization, and Heartburn Awareness. We even came up with a novel committee named the Healthy People 2010 committee following the federal government's initiative for HP2010.
We are just getting our ASHP chapter off the ground. Last year, we sent two members to participate in the Clinical Skills Competition at the Mid-Year Meeting. The kick to it is that the two students didn't even have a therapeutics course done at the time of the event. Surprisingly, they got most of the answers correct, not good enough to finish in the top 10, but good for no therapeutics.
We now have the two honor frats, Rho Chi and Phi Lambda Sigma, at our campus. We are also starting up a Kappa Psi chapter, which I am involved with too. At some point in the future, I expect a Kappa Epsilon chapter as well at South but I do not know when that will happen.
Involvement is going to depend from school to school and class to class. If you have a few in a class that really wants to involved, a lot can be accomplished. Goodluck!
