Alpha Sigma Phi to offer $1,500 scholarship to UNC undergraduate

A new scholarship for undergraduate students will soon be available from UNC’s newest social fraternity hopeful.

Alpha Sigma Phi, which started working to be established in November 2013, is currently recognized by its national office as a colony and expects to receive charter approval by spring 2015.

Official approval from UNC’s Interfraternity Council is also pending.

Alpha Sigma Phi will offer $1,500 to a single undergraduate student at UNC.

Titled “To Better the Student,” the award is available to anyone, regardless of his or her interest in Greek life.

Senior and scholarship director Phillip Chu said the fraternity plans to offer the scholarship annually. Once the application is released in about two weeks, students will have a window of roughly two months to submit.

Chu said the application will ask students to include information, such as GPA and major, and to complete two short essay questions. The first recipient will receive his or her scholarship money for the spring 2015 semester.

“Showing our dedication to making UNC a better community is something that we value and pride ourselves on,” said junior Connor DeHaven, the chapter’s president.

“Offering an academic, merit-based scholarship to the University increases awareness while also making UNC a better place.”

Chu and faculty advisor Ketan Mayer-Patel also said the goal of the scholarship is to better someone’s educational experience and give back to the community at UNC.

“I think fraternities need to engage with the larger student body, and they need to be true to their charters,” Mayer-Patel said.

“It’s great that they’ve taken some of their resources — because most of the fraternity is funded by themselves — and they’ve carved off some of that in order to try to give back to some other Carolina student, regardless of whether they’re in a fraternity or not.”

DeHaven said because the fraternity is new to UNC, he hopes the scholarship will help raise their profile on campus. He said he also wants the fraternity to become a sustainable organization and leave a large impact on the school.

Mayer-Patel said he hopes the members of Alpha Sigma Phi are proud of what they do with their time at UNC and that their work has a lasting impact on the campus.

“Starting a fraternity is a huge amount of work and requires a tremendous amount of initiative,” he said.

“So, what I hope is that they’re successful and are able to establish something that can have a long-lasting legacy and be something that 50 to 100 years from now is still around.”

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