On April 25-27, 2008, the Sigma Sigma Chapter of Kappa Delta celebrated 100 years at Iowa State. The Sigma Sigma Chapter of Kappa Delta was established on April 11, 1908 at Iowa State University. 

Friday evening the collegians and alumnae enjoyed hors d'oeuvres and conversation at The Knoll (ISU President Gregory Geoffroy's home). The reception was a time to catch up with old friends and make some new friends as well. The house was abuzz with conversation and hugs as women reunited for the first time in years.  Sisters picked up just where they left off and thoroughly enjoyed each others company.

On Saturday, the Sigma Sigmas were entertained at various homes throughout Ames. Each home hosted a different decade, from the 1940s to the 2000s. Pledge classes reunited at the homes and reminisced about their days in the chapter house. The chapter house was open for house tours for alumnae and active members also gave campus tours.  Old photo albums and history books were on display which gave everyone a chance see how rich a story Sigma Sigma has had at Iowa State.

Saturday evening, the women gathered for dinner and a program in the Sun Room at the Memorial Union. Anyone who was in attendance knew the women all had something special in common, even though most of them were actually strangers, when the women sang the opening and closing dinner songs. Sigma Sigma's very honored guest, Julie Langdren Johnson, Kappa Delta's current National Panhellenic Delegate and past National President, talked about Sigma Sigma's rich history and how proud she was of the chapter.

The weekend ended with a causal brunch at the chapter house. Sisters bid farewell and made plans to see each other again. All in all, it was a weekend of sisterhood, fun and reuniting.

On behalf of the Centennial Planning Committee, we would like to thank everyone for a successful centennial celebration! We had over 210 women attend various events throughout the weekend! We hope that everyone who attended was able to connect with those that they hadn’t seen in a while and we also hope everyone had a great time!

The committee is working on wrapping up the details of the past weekend. However, we did want to follow-up on a few items from the past weekend as quickly as we could.

First, the Centennial gift to the chapter, the Kappa Delta Scholarship… Thanks to your generous contributions, we have reached our $25,000.00 goal! If you haven’t had an opportunity to contribute yet, you still may. A gift of any amount will be appreciated and help us to honor the Sigma Sigma chapter’s just celebrated centennial! Please give on-line by following the instructions on the following link: http://www.foundation.iastate.edu/kdgift 

Second, pictures of the weekend can be purchased from Jolesch photography’s website: http://www.jolesch.com/findPhoto.aspx?Criteria=Sigma%20Sigma These pictures include candid photos of the decade reunions and also the group photo at the MU. If you have problems, please type in "Sigma Sigma" for the "Event Name" to find our photos. Jolesch is still working on enhancing the group photo that was taken at the Memorial Union. They stated they would have this completed by next Friday the 9th however, they wanted to make the pictures available to us as soon as possible, so please continue to check back at their website if you are interested in ordering the group photo. The chapter members have also created a shared photo website that includes more cute candid photos. You can visit that at: picasaweb.google.com/SigmaSigmaCentennial

We will be including articles of our celebration in the Kappa Delta Angelos and the ISU Foundation newsletter, so please keep a look out for Sigma Sigma in print!

We did have seven women volunteer for the Stately Mansion Committee, the chapter renovation committee. Please keep an eye out for more to come!  If you would like to volunteer, please email Angela Morel.

Finally, We are planning on working with the chapter to issue a quarterly newsletter to alumnae as a way to stay connected with the house and with other alumnae. To that note, we have had requests from a few women to distribute up-dated contact information. This was a difficult request for the committee because we want to balance the desire for women to stay connected and the request from others to keep their contact information confidential. The best compromise we can come up with was to direct questions to the Alumnae Relations Chair at the chapter house, and if we have information on file for a specific alum, we can provide that to the specific person requesting the information. (Any alumnae interested in helping maintain and or redesign the chapter website should contact the chapter because we would love to improve the site and possibly make a private side for members only, but we currently do not know of anyone with that skill set.)

Thank you again for your dedication to Kappa Delta and making 100 years of sisterhood possible!

In AOT,

The Sigma Sigma Centennial Committee