At the University of Texas at Austin ACM Student Chapter, we continually deliver an excellent organization to our members for them to keep coming back and to encourage their friends to join. We equate "retention" with recruitment. Once we recruit students, it is equally as difficult (or perhaps moreso) to retain them as members!

The recruitment process begins during the summer for incoming freshmen, kicks off with a series of events in the beginning of the semester, and continues throughout the semester with our Officer Program. Our events are roughly categorized in the corporate, academic, social, and officer-related flavors.

Recruitment begins via summer tabling. We speak to incoming students during the University's six summer orientation sessions open a channel of communication via our website. Once the school term begins we heavily advertise: we flyer all over, send mail outs to multiple groups, and organize a volunteer task force to make class announcements for our semester's events.

This is the easy part. Students know about our chapter of the ACM at this point because of our efforts, along with the department's endorsement. The challenge is to get them jazzed up about participating.

Our first major event is our General Meeting, which is the first information session for our organization. We make it fun and exciting by providing free prizes, free food, and free t-shirts. Amazon sponsored our event this year.

Most important to the program is our semesterly Officer Retreat. Approximately thirty-five officers attend this off-campus camping trip, giving them the opportunity to become acquainted in a computer-free environment. We introduce students to their teams and have various team-building activities and icebreakers, along with the essential s'mores and grilling.

Central to our recruitment process is our officer program. Our officer program is extensive and is one of the UT ACM's unique features.

The officer program consists of four titles: junior officers, operating officers, senior officers, and executive officers. Students proceed through the program in that order, with the common officer titles—President, Vice-President, and so on—being at the senior officer level.

Our organization has approximately fifty officers at any time in the semester which have enough member points to be considered "active."

Our officer program initiates new and existing students to the organization by a series of events kicking off each semester. Our Junior Officer Orientation allows new members to become familiar with the program, and our off-campus Officer Party allows us to socialize in a casual, informal environment. Our Officer Retreat follows.

The most crucial factors to our success are presenting an organized, professional, and well-led community. It is important to provide students with a constant supply of interaction for the community to grow and evolve.

Thorough planning allows us to provide quality events, but does not provide retention. By having interactive events, students will get to know each other on a personal basis and return later. With persistent events throughout the semester, they will continue to be involved. With three to four events each week, including both weekly events, such as tutoring or company information sessions, to unique, once-a-semester events, the UT ACM always provides students with something to suit their needs.