“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
-President John F. Kennedy
STARKVILLE, MS– Every year, a group of our fraternity’s most promising leaders travels to Richmond, VA for the Ruck Leadership Institute. Founded over 20 years ago, the Ruck Leadership Institute has become a pillar of the SigEp experience. Students from across the country gather to participate in educational programming facilitated by successful SigEp alumni and learn how to bring positive change back to their respective chapters. Earlier this summer, the Mississippi Beta chapter sent three brothers to Richmond, two as Ruck Scholars and one as a program intern.
The curriculum of the Ruck Leadership Institute is centered around the five Exemplary Leadership Practices, a set of focal points that work together to create strong leaders. The practices include Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Empower Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. These areas are expanded upon in the book The Leadership Challenge, co-authored by SigEp alumnus Barry Posner, UCSB ’70. For the week of Ruck, students are grouped into one of eight groups, each with its own set of successful alumni to help facilitate discussions on personal leadership, chapter growth, and goal setting.
Andrew Beatty is a junior mechanical engineering major from Alpharetta, GA. Andrew says that his biggest takeaway from the 2023 Ruck Leadership Institute was “learning to leverage my leadership by focusing on my strengths and finding reliable ways to mitigate my weaknesses.” Beatty looks forward to putting the lessons he learned at Ruck into action in our chapter. “I look forward to taking on projects in the chapter with a strong focus on teamwork. I learned at Ruck that being a passionate leader involves Inspiring a Shared Vision and Encouraging Others to Act, and I am excited to put those principles to work,” Beatty said. When asked to describe his Ruck experience in only three words, Beatty chose “passionate, personal, and practical” to highlight the impact that Ruck has had on him.
Isaiah Morgan is a sophomore business administration major from Jacksonville, FL. Morgan describes his biggest takeaway from Ruck as the emphasis placed on Challenging the Process. “Something that really stuck out to me was the importance of Challenging the Process. Getting to talk to our Grand Chapter President, Billy Madalon, and see how I can help take my chapter to the next level through Challenging the Process was really impactful,” Morgan said. When asked about how he plans to implement what he has learned into our chapter, Morgan said that this experience has empowered him to continue serving our chapter on the Executive Board. “Having this experience at Ruck has inspired me to find new perspectives on my chapter’s culture and challenge its potential. One way I hope to impact my chapter after attending Ruck is by running to serve as chapter president, a role that would allow me to lead my chapter from the front as we strive for higher ideals.” Morgan summed up his Ruck experience with the words “impactful, inspiring, and influential” and is excited to bring that back to Mississippi Beta.
The Ruck Leadership Institute would not be possible without the hard work of SigEp headquarters staff and the generosity of donors nationwide. Our chapter is extremely grateful to all the amazing staff and facilitators who allowed our brothers to have a safe and impactful experience in Richmond and look forward to sending brothers to Ruck in the coming years.