about ZTA

History

Zeta Tau Alpha was founded on October 15, 1898, by nine women, at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University), in Farmville, Virginia. These young women desired permanence to their friendships and hoped to perpetuate their sisterhood long after college. After a year of careful consideration, the nine founders selected Zeta Tau Alpha to be its formal name.

Zeta Tau Alpha consists of three entities: Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity, Zeta Tau Alpha Foundation, Inc., and Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity Housing Corporation. Zeta Tau Alpha and ZTA are terms often used to describe the organization as a whole.

9 Founders of Zeta Tau Alpha

Francis Yancey Smith Ruby Leigh Orgain Alice Bland Coleman Maud Jones Horner Ethel Coleman Van Name Della Lewis Hundley Helen M. Crafford Alice Grey Welsh Mary Jones Batte

Purpose of Zeta Tau Alpha

Intensify friendships, promote happiness among its members, to perform such deeds, and to mold such opinions as will conduce to the building up of a purer and nobler womanhood in the world.

Open Motto

"Seek the Noblest"

Creed of Zeta Tau Alpha

To realize that within our grasp, in Zeta Tau Alpha, lies the opportunities to learn those things which will ever enrich and ennoble our lives; to be true to ourselves and to those within and without our circle; to think in terms of all mankind and our service to the world; to be steadfast, strong, and clean of heart and mind, remembering that since the thought is father to the deed, only that which we would have manifested in our experience will be entertained in thought; to find satisfaction in being rather than seeming, thus strengthening us the higher qualities of the spirit; to prepare for service and learn the nobility of serving, thereby earning the right to be served; to seek understanding that we might gain true wisdom; to look for the good in everyone; to see beauty with its enriching influence; to be humble in success and without bitterness in defeat; to have the welfare and harmony of the fraternity at heart, striving ever to make our lives a symphony of high ideals devotion to the right, the good, and the true, without a discordant note; remembering always that the foundation precept of Zeta Tau Alpha was love, "the greatest of all things."