Golden Key International Honor Society (GK) the world's largest collegiate honor society. Membership into the Society is by invitation only and applies to the top 15% of college and university sophomores, juniors and seniors, as well as top-performing graduate students in all fields of study, based solely on their academic achievements. GK’s main purpose is unlocking members potential with a focus on the areas of Academics, Leadership, and Service and is committed to a high standard of scholastic achievement, and an ethos of integrity, innovation, respect, collaboration and diversity. I joined Golden Key after my first quarter at the UW. Before joining Golden Key I knew nothing about honor societies and I just happened to stumble upon a few members and found it intriguing. After attending the Golden Key’s new member recognition event, some of the members saw potential me in and urged me to join the 2013-2014 leadership team. Out of a pool of applicants, I was later chosen to be GK’s secretary. After a year of service, I was appointed GK’s president for the 2014-2015 school year. Through this experience I have learned the hardships of leading an unenthusiastic group, how to build momentum, persevere despite many obstacles, and how to create a movement towards something meaningful.

 

 

Learning and Reasoning: Problem solving

The first thing I noticed after joining Golden Key International Honor Society is despite the increasing number of people accepting our invitations, the number of active members have been decreasing. This was the number one problem that GK’s leadership had to try to change. After bringing this up to the other officers, we decided that I would lead this initiative. The first thing we did was diagnose the problem. Why was member participation lacking despite the exponential growth in GK’s members? After brainstorming some ideas, sending out a survey to our members, and interviewing willing members, we realized that many people just join honor societies to embellish their resumes. We decided attract our members by providing what they needed. Many of our members expressed the need for more service opportunities and professional development opportunities.  This triggered many new annual events including Breast Cancer Awareness Blankets, Giving Tree, Operation Care Package, Better World Books Book Drive and Princeton Review workshops.  I lead the creation, and implementation of the Breast Cancer Awareness Blankets, Giving Tree, and Operation Care Package events. From these events, we were able to increase member participation by 50%.

 

 

Civic Responsibility: Service

Many of the annual events I planned focused around serving the Seattle community. I felt that the support from a small university community would bring life and help maintain the community. The first event I lead was Breast Cancer Awareness Blankets. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Golden Key hosts a blanket making event where members from the community make blankets, scarves, and cards for breast cancer patients at the University of Washington Medical Center. We urge people, whether they are a cancer survivor, know someone with cancer, or they just want to brighten up the day of a current cancer patient to come and participate. The second event I planned was giving tree in partnership with the Salvation Army. Golden Key members would table in front of a Fred Meyers and ask for toy donations for children in need during the holiday season. The last event that I organized was Operation Care Package (OCP). OCP is GK’s way of helping the homeless population in Seattle prepare for the winter. Every year we make care packages which include clothes, first aid, food, and other items and then we will distribute them to homeless people in Pioneer Square. I was pleased to see how well these events were able to build a stronger community and brin gpeople toegher. 

 

 

Group Dynamics: Organizational beahvior 

When I first joined Golden Key, there was very little structure to the leadership team. There were various roles outlined by Golden Key headquarters, but most of the work was done by one member. I devoted a significant amount of time my first year as GK’s secretary to restructuring our leadership team. I did this by recording detailed meeting minutes, writing down detailed notes on each member’s action items every week and meeting with every officer to make sure they understand their role. In addition, I implemented a new way of organizing meeting minutes and documenting member participating. The platform I used to organize GK’s documents is Google Documents. By creating a universal folder that includes all of GK’s files that every officer has access to make it significantly easier to communicate and make sure everyone is on the same page. By the end of the year, everyone was able to work cohesively and in a coordinated manner.