-: My name is Ginny Ritenour and I'm the Director
of Chapter Programs at the Virginia Tech Alumni Association
and as a team we split up the programs that we work on.
We have our chapters assigned to us by regions,
so we have kind of a portfolio of chapters that
we work with and we guide the programming,
we guide the volunteers and the work they do.
We do volunteer leadership training.
We have training sessions throughout the year,
both in person and online and provide them the resources
that they need to host quality events that represent
the university in the way we'd like I to be represented.
The day to day for me as the Director, I not only have my
chapters that I work with so the individual volunteers
with my chapters, but I also participate in our
leadership team here in our office with other,
we have a Director of Reunion Programs and Director
of Career Programs and so we have a whole team.
So, I participate in those decisions and meetings
for the Alumni Association as a whole and engage
with our Board of Directors.
We have a committee that we work with from our Board
and we also work with our development group here on campus.
So, we have meetings about that and figuring out how
we can interact with our annual giving folks
in our reunion programs and how we can bring
our volunteers into that role as well.
Our schedule absolutely ebbs and flows,
sometimes with the academic calendar, sometimes
with just other events that are going on for our volunteers.
It may be based on for example, when we're in football
season, the football game watching parties are primarily
what they're focused on, but then the spring can include
speaker events, community service projects.
We have student sendoff events all summer.
That's another type of program where we basically
provide a package for our volunteers and the training
and the marketing for that.
As staff, we are busiest in the spring getting them ready
for those programs.
We talk with our volunteers individually on the phone.
We do online trainings and then we also attend
Chapter events in person, not only to provide support
but also to be representative of the university
and provide a welcome and university update
and that kinda thing.
So, we also get the opportunity ourselves to be speakers
at a lot of the events.