Chemeketa Voices

Presidential Hopes:
Reggie Haft

Reggie Haft had modest goals when she was elected president of the Chemeketa Community College Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) chapter. Phi Theta Kappa is the international honor society of two-year colleges.

“I wanted a 10 percent increase in membership and to complete four special projects,” said Haft.

During her tenure, she completed 10 special projects and increased the group’s membership by a whopping 75 percent, from about two dozen members to nearly 100. Then she started thinking about the big picture.

Haft decided to run for the organization’s Rocky Mountain-Cascade regional presidency and was elected to the post last month.

“I don’t have all the answers, but some of my ideas worked at Chemeketa and I wanted to see if they could work at other colleges,” said Haft, 24, a Salem resident.

 In addition to her victory in the presidential election, she won the PTK Regional Literary Award for an essay on refugees in Dafur and the Chemeketa PTK chapter was honored for the quality of its yearbook.

Haft was the first in her family to attend college and the only one of her siblings to graduate high school. After taking a break from school she decided that college was going to be necessary to her future success.

“I started out in computer science and finally landed in business. Now, I’m co-enrolled at Linfield College and planning on earning an MBA (master’s of business administration) from Willamette University,” she said.

Haft first joined Phi Theta Kappa because she was interested in the scholarships available through the program, but she soon began taking a more active role in the organization. As the PTK’s honcho, Haft is most proud of bringing the organization’s Satellite Seminar Series to Chemeketa’s campus. The program beams in lectures from prominent scholars, writers and other dignitaries and viewers on participating campuses get to ask questions.

“It was amazing to have access to the speakers the program lines up,” Haft said.

One of the lectures, “Gold, Gods, Glory: The Global Dynamics of Power,” inspired her essay on Darfur.

When she’s not busy racking up accolades for herself and Chemeketa – or studying – Haft works in Chemeketa’s disability services office turning books into audio files for vision-impaired students or assisting in test-taking.

Haft sums up the past year in a single word: “Awesome.”

Fortunately, the coming year looks just as promising.

For more information about Phi Theta Kappa, click here.

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated June 5, 2008 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.