Chapter 6:

"Alpha Tau Omega holds before the young men of the country an ideal and something greater than a mere intellectual ideal. Alpha Tau Omega stands for heart as well as head. It has given men a true ideal of life."

If you were to call central casting and request a national fraternity president, Bob Simonds would probably show up. Elected to his first term in 1986 and his second in 1988, Simonds is the epitome of a devoted, volunteer fraternity officer. His credentials are long and impressive.

Simonds is, by his own admission, much too young a man to have known the legendary Tommy Clark. Yet Clark, the world's first collegiate Dean of Men, left an indelible impression on Simonds by way of a man named Fred Turner. Turner was Clark's protege and successor. He was also the employer of freshman Bob Simonds.

Participation in the Navy V-12 program kept Simonds moving from campus to campus. Before graduating he had studied on three campuses — Illinois, Ohio Wesleyan and Pennsylvania. And he had been Worthy Master of ATO chapters at all three schools.

Simonds and Mark O. Thorsby, Albion, who had succeeded Steve Siders as Executive Director in 1987, began focusing the Board of Directors on a long-term strategic plan for ATO. The strategic plan calls for major changes to make the Fraternity's actions follow its words. The plan calls for increasing the number of new chapters, standards for which members will be held accountable, more cooperation with other fraternal organizations, increasing the number of volunteers giving time to the National Fraternity and teaching undergraduate leadership principles that will help them solve problems specific to their chapter.

Thorsby proved very effective in keeping the Fraternity moving toward its goals. He possessed the ability to focus on the large picture, avoiding pitfalls that would have slowed or stopped the Fraternity's progressive attitude.

Thorsby's leadership style, optimism and twelve years of experience on the National Headquarters staff was instrumental in assembling what is arguably the best professional staff in the Fraternity world.

In August 1990, the Fraternity celebrated its 125th anniversary in Richmond, Virginia. The 125th Congress elected the first National President following the adoption of the corporate model of government. Robert C. Knuepfer Jr., Denison, a highly successful attorney who knows his way around a corporate board room, was the man elevated to Fraternity's highest elected office. The youthful ATO brilliantly then went back to his undergraduate days when he was Zeta Iota chapter president and the 1973 recipient of the coveted Richard A. Ports scholarship fellowship award. Marked for great things in the Fraternity, he became the 1974 Thomas Arkle Clark award recipient. That same year he graduated from Dennison University summa cum laud. While attending law school at Northwestern University, he used his spare time to earn a master's degree in management, finance and accounting, and served as chairman of the High Council.

Several of the initiatives of the 80s had a profound impact on ATO and defined ATO's leadership in the Greek-world. At the onset of the liability insurance crisis in the mid 80s, ATO was the first fraternity to deliver a "state of emergency" and adopt a risk of avoidance policy that placed added controls on the consumption of alcohol at chapter functions. The change in Fraternity government enacted by the Richmond Congress — wherein the Fraternity adopted a corporate rather than federal system of government — was another major event that had its genesis in the 80s.

By 1990 ATO's track record on producing state of the art leadership development programs was well know. Other national fraternities and sororities were asking questions about ATO programs. LeaderShape Inc. was beginning to attract other collegiate organizations that were interested in the programming ATO helped create. In 1992, ATO joined with Kappa Kappa Gamma women's fraternity to conduct leadership conferences nationwide for undergraduates of both organizations. It was the first time in the Greek system that national men's fraternity and a national women's fraternity co-sponsored any type of programming on a national basis.

The Fraternity's focus, along with its strategic plan had already begun paying off. For that, ATO became known as America's leadership development fraternity.