The University of Wisconsin-Madison Phi Beta Lambda chapter has had its share of ups and downs.  When Wisconsin PBL first became its own chapter in 1967, Madison Business School (now Wisconsin School of Business) had one of the few active chapters in our state.  As time went on, membership slowly faded.  It looked as though the University of Wisconsin-Madison would no longer have a chapter. 

Luckily for our university, on September 21, 2006, nine first year students gathered in a small room in Grainger Hall to determine, and ultimately change the fate of UW-Madison PBL.  These nine students assembled an officer team and planned a fall semester kickoff.  In the four weeks before the kickoff, this small group of entrepreneurs littered the sidewalks, chalkboards, and lecture halls with bright orange flyers.  This was an attempt was called Bringing Business Back, and worked to bring business back to the organization and campus.  

The big night finally came and as these nine first year students stood in the empty room, their hopes of a 100 person turnout were slowly disappearing.  As the time got closer to the beginning of the meeting, the students looked around, realizing the room was over half full!  As they continued to get ready to present five minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, they were amazed at the line of people waiting to get in.  This line stretched through the atrium and out the door.  Immediately the officer team leapt into action, commandeering two adjacent rooms, which were both quickly filled to capacity.  By the time the nine students had finished their presentation three times (once in each room) and sent everyone off for pizza, they had counted over 350 heads, more than tripling their expectations.

One week later, only expecting about half of the people at the kickoff to come back to sign up and pay dues, these students received over 325 forms requesting membership and over 2,000 payments.  By the end of the semester, our membership had sky-rocketed.  Our membership total was just under 400 members. 

In those six short weeks, the deflated chapter was able to blast off and become the largest chapter in the nation.  To this date, UW-Madison continues to carry on the tradition of recruiting hundreds of members.  We hope to hold onto the title of largest chapter in the nation.