“The group is basically about business or business interests, so you don’t really have to be a business major,” said NE Phi Beta Lambda president Juan Gonzalez. “You may just want to know how the professional world actually works.”

Gonzalez, who wants to major in international business, said he started the organization because there was nothing like it on campus. He looked up several organizations before deciding on Phi Beta Lambda because it covers a broader scope of business, he said.

“It would work for anybody in economics, advertising, marketing, business, anything in those fields,” he said. “It doesn’t exclude anybody, and you can find a fit.”

Student Courtney Carden is the chapter’s vice president.

“I got involved because Juan asked me to, because he needed help starting it, and I was the first person he came to,” she said. “We kind of started it up together over the summer.”

Carden is a paralegal major, but she hopes the club fosters her personal growth, she said.

“There’s an area I get to compete in called business law, so I get to use what I’m learning in class out there,” she said.

Club reporter Leo Abreu also lent a hand in getting the organization started.

“When I first started here, I had already finished two years at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, where I became a founding father of a fraternity,” he said.

Abreu wanted to use his experience to start a similar organization on NE that would really get students involved with the school, he said.

“The organization I wanted to create was pretty much what he [Gonzalez] wanted to do as well, but instead it was for business and mine was for community service,” Abreu said.

The organization has started raising money to help local children’s charities by hosting a video game expo each Thursday.

Abreu said he wanted to host the fundraiser on the same day of every week because it is a good way to build a presence.

“We want to get it into people’s heads, ‘This is what they do every Thursday,’” he said.

For a donation, students can play some of the latest, most popular video game titles with fellow students.

“Last week was our biggest video game expo yet,” Abreu said. “We had three projectors and three PlayStations, three X-Boxes and three Wiis.”

The video game expos are held in the NSTU cafeteria area.

Upcoming dates are 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Nov. 10, noon-3 p.m. Nov. 17 and 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 1.

For more information or to join Phi Beta Lambda, contact Gonzalez at juan.gonzalez061@my.tccd.edu or the student activities office at 817-515-6644.