40 Fun Facts About Alpha Gamma Delta

Which Alpha Gamma Delta founder, later Michigan's first licensed woman architect, wrote its Purpose?

Emily Helen Butterfield wrote the Purpose, which the 1921 Convention adopted. She also designed two chapter houses and edited the fraternity's magazine for seven years.

Alpha Gamma Delta styles itself a fraternity, not a sorority, a word built on 'soror' from which language?

Latin is where soror, meaning sister, comes from. Alpha Gamma Delta is officially a women's fraternity, as are many other women's Greek-letter groups.

Which animal is the official mascot of Alpha Gamma Delta?

Squirrel was the choice, under the name Skiouros, because the nimble animal, at home in autumn woods, stood for a spirit of energetic alertness and progress.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose opens by seeking understanding so that what may be vouchsafed?

Wisdom is the first aim the Purpose names. Later clauses turn to health, friendship, service and high ideals before closing on the fraternity's good name.

Which Alpha Gamma Delta member from Auburn became Alabama's second female governor in 2017?

Kay Ivey took office when Robert Bentley resigned, then won full terms in 2018 and 2022. At Auburn she was president of her first-year pledge class.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Karen McCullah co-wrote which Reese Witherspoon comedy about a sorority president?

Legally Blonde was adapted in 2001 from Amanda Brown's novel by McCullah and her writing partner Kirsten Smith, the duo behind 10 Things I Hate About You.

Alpha Gamma Delta is the youngest of a 'Triad' of sororities founded at which New York university?

Syracuse produced all three: Alpha Phi in 1872, Gamma Phi Beta in 1874 and Alpha Gamma Delta in 1904, which was founded at a professor's home.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose urges wide acquaintance but says to cherish friendships with whom?

A chosen few is the Purpose's phrase, and it then asks each woman to study the perfecting of those bonds rather than simply collect more of them.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Amber Mariano won the million-dollar prize on an all-star season of which show?

Survivor crowned her in its 2004 All-Stars season, and she got engaged to fellow castaway Rob Mariano during the live finale.

Alpha Gamma Delta's fight against hunger partners with Feeding America and which other nonprofit?

Meals on Wheels and Feeding America give chapters local service projects, while the fraternity's Foundation funds grants to groups feeding their own communities.

Which gem, set into the Alpha of the member badge, is the official jewel of Alpha Gamma Delta?

Pearl is the jewel, and the badge shows it off: its monogram of three Greek letters outlines one of them in the gems, with diamonds sometimes added to the other two.

Alpha Gamma Delta's colors, also enameled on its new member pin, are red, buff and which other?

Green rounds out the trio. In the official flowers it comes from a spray of asparagus fern set beside the red and buff blooms.

Which red and buff bloom, paired with asparagus fern, is the official flower of Alpha Gamma Delta?

Rose is the flower, and it lends its name to the Feast of Roses, a convention tradition first held in 1915.

Alpha Gamma Delta moved its headquarters from Chatham, New Jersey, to which Midwestern city in 1965?

Indianapolis became the third home of the fraternity's administrative offices. In 2011 they moved across the city to North Meridian Street.

Which Alpha Gamma Delta founder, one of only two juniors among them, was elected first president?

Jennie Titus took the chair at the founding meeting, aged 21, and wore the first badge. She later served as Grand President of the whole fraternity.

Which professor, at whose home Alpha Gamma Delta was founded, urged students to form fraternities?

Wellesley Coddington believed his campus needed more women's fraternities, and that conviction is what inspired the first president to help found one.

Which umbrella body for women's sororities, founded in 1902, did Alpha Gamma Delta join in 1909?

National Panhellenic Conference membership came just five years after the founding. Alpha Delta Pi and Zeta Tau Alpha were admitted the same year.

Alpha Gamma Delta went international in 1919 by installing Tau Chapter at which Canadian university?

Toronto made the fraternity international, and that year's convention matched the moment by adopting its first international philanthropy project.

Alpha Gamma Delta voted in 1919 to create what for underprivileged children, its first philanthropy?

A summer camp opened the next year beside Wolf Lake in Jackson, and members staffed it and a later Canadian site for more than 25 years.

From 1979, Alpha Gamma Delta's philanthropy backed a juvenile foundation fighting which disease?

Diabetes stayed the fraternity's cause for nearly four decades. The partnership with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation was announced at the Diamond Anniversary Convention.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose calls sincerity essential and which other quality invaluable?

Kindness is the quality the Purpose calls invaluable, in the same clause that holds truth inviolable.

The closing line of Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose hopes others will love the fraternity for her what?

Womanhood is the last word of the Purpose, which first hopes people will esteem the fraternity for her attainments and revere her for her purposes.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose asks members to covet what in environment, manner, word and thought?

Beauty is what the Purpose says to covet, and its very next clause asks members to possess high ideals and to attain somewhat unto them.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Purpose asks a member to honor her home, her country and which third thing?

Her religious faith completes the trio, in a clause that follows the call to serve the community where a member is placed.

Begun in 1936, Alpha Gamma Delta's International Reunion Day falls near which month's third Saturday?

April was picked because the old Founders' Day, May 30, kept landing during final exams or after campuses had already closed.

Which sorority, founded at Emporia State in 1921, merged into Alpha Gamma Delta at its 1959 convention?

Theta Sigma Upsilon brought 13 of its chapters across when the two groups merged at French Lick, Indiana.

Which two Greek letters name the Alpha Gamma Delta honors adopted at its 1919 convention?

Epsilon Pi honors were adopted at the 1919 Convention, and two of the founders are remembered as wearers of the Circle of Epsilon Pi.

When an Alpha Gamma Delta member dies, the fraternity says she has entered what?

Chapter Grand is the fraternity's term for sisters who have died, and families are asked what should become of a late member's badge.

Which Alberta resort town hosted Alpha Gamma Delta's first convention outside the United States in 1947?

Banff welcomed the 1947 meeting, 28 years after a Canadian chapter first made the fraternity international.

Alpha Gamma Delta has canceled conventions for wars and a pandemic; what caused the 1933 cancellation?

The Great Depression stopped the 1933 gathering. War conditions canceled three others, the Korean conflict a fourth and the 2020 pandemic a sixth.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Abbie Stockard, an Auburn nursing major, won which pageant title for 2025?

Miss America went to her as Miss Alabama 2024, the fourth winner from her state. Fellow member Barbara Jo Walker took the same crown in 1947.

What is Alpha Gamma Delta's magazine, first edited in 1909 by founder Estelle Shepard Beswick, called?

The Quarterly got its first business manager, founder Georgia Otis Chipman, that same year, and another founder later edited it for seven years.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Kelly Loeffler, later a US senator, co-owned which WNBA team from 2011?

Atlanta Dream games were a fixture of her schedule for a decade. She sold her stake in February 2021, weeks after losing her Senate runoff.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Beth Ford took over as chief executive of which agricultural cooperative in 2018?

Land O'Lakes promoted her from chief operating officer, making her the first openly gay woman to run a Fortune 500 company.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Jane Hamilton Hall oversaw the Clementine reactor at which national laboratory?

Los Alamos hired her in late 1945, after her wartime Manhattan Project work, and in 1966 she became the first woman on the Atomic Energy Commission's General Advisory Committee.

Alpha Gamma Delta's Andrea Canning joined which television newsmagazine as a correspondent in 2012?

Dateline brought her to NBC after eight years at ABC News, and the fraternity gave her its Talent of Leadership award in 2015 and its Distinguished Citizens Award in 2018.

Alpha Gamma Delta's first chapter-owned house was bought in 1912 by Iota Chapter at which university?

Washington's Iota Chapter in Seattle was only three years old when it bought the house, after a burst of growth that took the fraternity to nine chapters by 1909.

Alpha Gamma Delta founder Mary Louise Snider spent 13 years as a Methodist missionary in which country?

Chile was her home from 1909, teaching in Concepcion and Santiago. Back in the United States, she devoted her time to working with the blind.

An Alpha Gamma Delta founder wrote a 1931 book on which subject as applied to college fraternities?

Heraldry was a study she shared with her father, and she drew coats of arms for many Greek-letter groups, among them Zeta Tau Alpha and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

An Alpha Gamma Delta founder was founding president of a Business Women's Club formed in 1912 in which city?

Detroit's club grew out of loneliness: every business acquaintance she had was a man, and she wanted to know other working women to lunch with.