Happenings
Events, Notable Mentions, and Awards for Daniel M. Reck

Daniel M. Reck will work to develop youth’s leadership skills at the 2010 National Scout Jamboree.JULY 21, 2010 — FORT A.P. HILL, VA. — Daniel M. Reck arrives today to join the staff of the Boy Scouts of America's National Scout Jamboree.  Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the organization, the eight-day event will be held at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., beginning July 26.

Reck will serve as a copy editor for the event’s Jamboree Today newspaper, which has a daily readership of about 50,000. He will work alongside both seasoned journalists and scouting youth members completing their first-ever newspaper assignments. Reck’s advising experience with The Mu of Monmouth College, a student-edited blog about men’s and women’s fraternity life on campus, caught the eye of Grant Jackson, the newspaper’s chairman.  Reck is Monmouth College’s assistant director of Greek life, leadership and involvement.

Reck, who has experience on a dozen Boy Scout summer camp staffs, is no stranger to working at a national jamboree. He served as an emergency medical technician in 2001 and has stayed in contact with fellow staff members from his first experience. He said he looks forward to networking with the 45,000 scouts, adult leaders and staff from across the nation who are attending this year’s jamboree.

“I learned a lot from the other staff, scoutmasters and military support personnel at the jamboree,” Reck said. “Each has different experiences to share. The U.S. Army has hosted several recent jamborees, supporting the Boy Scouts’ youth development mission. The soldiers we work with are excellent role models of leadership and professionalism.”

The National Scout Jamboree has been held approximately every four years since 1937, hosting more than 740,000 young men – and a few young women, too, as part of the co-educational Venturing and Exploring programs. Following a tradition that began with Franlin Roosevelt, President Obama is expected to address the assembled scouts and help them celebrate the organization’s centennial.

As a youth, Reck earned the Boy Scouts’ highest award, the rank of Eagle Scout. He attributes much of his success in his professional life to skills he learned in scouting, where he was also inducted into scouting’s national honor society, the Order of the Arrow.

“The Order specifically, and scouting in general, were my first experience with the concept of fraternity,” said Reck.

The lessons learned from scouting, and later from his collegiate experience with DePauw University’s chapter of Sigma Nu Fraternity, have shaped Reck’s work with the Greek Life system at Monmouth. Nearly one quarter of MC’s student population is involved in a men’s or women’s fraternity.

“Many of the leadership development practices I use with students at Monmouth are derived from my time with scouting,” Reck said. “Scouting, which shares the same central values as the Greek organizations I advise, has strengthened my work with those groups.”

Much of Reck’s current work centers on the coeducational Venturing program, and has helped establish a Venturing crew at Monmouth College. The program develops leadership and service attributes in young men and women using high-adventure activities such as scuba diving, caving and intensive service projects.

“Scouting is a values-based organization, and young men and women who are involved are given the ability to make values-based decisions for their life,” said Stephen Bloomer, a senior development officer at Monmouth College and committee chair for the college's Venturing Crew 1853. “Scouting sets them up for success in the world of academia and citizenship.”

The Boy Scouts organization was founded in 1907 by Lord Baden Powell in England. Following a return from Africa, Powell discovered that young English men were interested in exploring the outdoors and wrote a non-military nature skills book, which then became the first scouting manual.

Three years later, in 1910, American William D. Boyce became lost in the famed London fog and was assisted by an English scout, who refused to accept a tip for doing the good deed. Boyce was intrigued and brought the scouting movement to the U.S., where it now develops important leadership skills in more than 2.7 million young men and women

—Mike Diamond of Monmouth CollegeCopyright 2010, Monmouth College.

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