Chapter History
Iota Phi History
On May 27, 1951, the national office installed thirty-four students, three scouting advisors, six faculty, and four honorary members as the Iota Phi chapter of Alpha Phi Omega. Gamma Gamma chapter (UC Berkeley) and Chi chapter (UCLA) brought spirit and ideas of Alpha Phi Omega to Davis. Iota Phi flourished in its early days under its first president, William Aylett Sparkes. Our founding brothers include Harry A Laidlaw, Jr. (UCD Faculty), Claude Burton Hutchison (UCD Dean, 66 years of age), and Knowles A. Ryerson (UCD Professor, 59 years of age). Incidentally, these are the two same people that Hutchison and Ryerson Halls are named after. By the records, 26 of the founding brothers had graduated or would graduate by 1952. Apparently, the chapter graduated en masse, leading to the de-activation of the Iota Phi chapter in the mid 1950's.
The spirit of Iota Phi rekindled in 1961 under the direction of Professor Harlan Pratt and his "Iota Phi Club." The chapter eventually reactivated with nine initiated, including their elected president, Oliver Michaelis, on September 20, 1962. These inspired and dedicated men, tried desperately to build a strong chapter from which the spirit of humanitarianism would grow. The next pledge class brought forth 5 more brothers. The third pledge class of Iota Phi included the notable Emil M. Mrak (Mrak Hall is named after him) and a total of 12 more brothers, doubling the chapter size. The chapter went through its ups and downs until around 1979, when David A. Emery, Deborah Sloane, and Elizabeth Tom pledged. These three were critical in establishing 'Families,' a tradition which we continue to this day.
The reborn Iota Phi chapter has progressively grown in strength and number since 1962 and going co-ed in 1976, and it has developed a broad service program encompassing service to the nation, community, and campus. Our service projects include Santa For Kids (a program created by our chapter for the HeadStart program), planting in the Arboretum, Special Olympics, trick-or-treating for UNICEF, various projects associated with Picnic Day on campus, Examiner Bay to Breakers, among other noteworthy projects.
Various Presidents have contributed their leadership skills to make Iota Phi what it is today. These people include (in reverse order): Kevin Hein, Teri Sheets, Richard Hale, Keith Chow, Joanna Ray, Kevin McKlain, Bella Fong, Bruce Grant, Pat Chan, Allen Tchoi, John Nguyen, Neuzil Lai, Flora Choi, Elaine Yee, Dave Balderrama, Clifford Alumno, Chris Tsubamoto, Sal Toscano, Tony Wan, Nancy Nguyen, Royce Fung, James Leu, Ernie Hsiung , Will Warriner, Anna Leu, Alex Ham, Kalen Fu, Anthony Toy, Andrew McClelland, Samantha Warriner, Minh Tran, Gina Lee, Dustin Nagrampa, Aaron Lipton, Andrew Mayen, Stephanie Liu, and for this term, Alice Cheng. These presidents and their officers have set the standard of Iota Phi excellence.
Alfred Sheets (pledge namesake some 13 years later) pledged on May 20, 1983; at that time, about 14% of the pledges were Asian. When Teri Grimm, Alfred's future wife and future Region X chair, pledged in 1985, 40% of her pledge class was Asian. By 1986, 70% of the pledge class was Asian. In contrast, the first Asian brother who pledged Iota Phi in 1967 was the only one in his class. Since then, ethnic diversity has been a major goal in our Rush program.
Our Brother chapter is Gamma (Cornell University), and our little Brother chapters are Kappa Sigma (CSU Sacramento), Alpha Alpha Xi (University of the Pacific), and Rho Rho (UC Irvine).