About FL Zeta PhiDE

In the spring of 2018, The Florida Zeta Chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon was brought to Florida State's campus. Here's a message from our Colony Coordinator, Sophia Parlade.

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"Coming into FSU as a freshman, I came to realize how much of a gap there was for a community of premedical students on campus. I came across Phi Delta Epsilon the summer going into my junior year through a couple of friends of mine, JC Alvarez and Michelle Figarola, that were members of the FL Alpha chapter at FIU. After some talking, I knew this was exactly the type of organization I wanted to be a part of. JC jokingly said I should bring it to FSU and, shortly after, I was officially determined. It started with my first email to Karen Katz, the CEO of Phi Delta Epsilon. We began exchanging emails and I had to do a series of tasks and gather information for her so she could determine if expanding a Chapter to FSU was feasible. I realized this was soon becoming a reality, so I decided to recruit others to help. These friends, Matthew Alonso, Jossan Roa, and Rene Elias, took on this journey with me and without their help, it wouldn’t haven’t been possible. During my junior year, it looked like bringing PhiDE to FSU would not happen due to many different roadblocks. We got turned down by the medical school due to not having enough funding. I had a couple of advisors tell me the effort wasn’t worth it. All I knew, was that bringing this medical fraternity to FSU would benefit so many future students and that if anything was worth the effort, this was it. Matthew kept me hopeful and urged me to stick with it, even when things were looking down. We decided to go through the Student Organization office and become a Registered Student Organization. Finally, after months of work, Karen informed us that we had been approved for colonization and she would be flying down to train us. We recruited an incredible executive board including Matthew as President, Jossan as VP of Finance, Madison Lynch as VP of Recruitment, Lisa Fernandez as VP of Programming, Julianne Lee as Secretary/Risk Management Officer and myself, Sophia Parlade, as Colony Coordinator. We became colonized on March 22, 2018. PhiDE represents different standards and values such as philanthropy, deity, education, service and integrity. 

With these values in mind, we recruited 45 founding class members. We had different educational, social, service and philanthropy events that helped us grow a colony. With tireless work from the executive board, we worked to make every event flawless. We quickly approached the Chartering ceremony in December of 2018 and all of our members’ families and the International Board including Karen, flew in for the event. We received our Charter that day, inducting us as the official FL Zeta Chapter at Florida State University, and we all got initiated as official members of the chapter. We continue to grow in knowledge, friendship and integrity as we continue our premedical careers and know that we always have our family of future physicians by our side to help us along the way." 

 

Sophia Parlade

Colony Coordinator