Committee chair, Greg Chittim ’01, ’02Th, opened the meeting. Lynne Gaudet provided metrics pertaining to Alumni Councilor communications. One action item that resulted from a Communications Working Group was a decision to shorten the meeting template. The template for the 208th meeting summary will be in short bullet point form outlining the meeting highlights and it will provide a link to the full minutes which will be posted online for alumni who are interested in reading more extensive information about the Alumni Council meeting. In addition, the 208th meeting template will include a link to the site where alumni can provide feedback to the Presidential Steering Committee for Moving Dartmouth Forward by the deadline of June 30th.
Jonathan Goldstein, Executive Director of Communications for Alumni Relations and Development provided an update on the work pertaining to the Alumni Directory. In October, the College moved from Harris to iModules with a soft launch to troubleshoot. In January, 2014, ADVANCE Web was launched. In February-March, 2014, the College connected the ADVANCE database to iModules. In April, 2014, the College began to promote the Alumni Directory and Career Network to the wider alumni body. The early promotion included an email to the dozen 2015 reunion classes. Jonathan outlined the planned rollout to the entire alumni body and the usage results to date. Looking forward, the College plans to assess the results from the first twelve classes they tested, send reminders this coming summer, and establish new patterns for outreach by increasing contacts (post reunions, Alumni Council, other close volunteers, special promotions).
The committee elected Jacques Steinberg ’88 to serve as vice chair of the Communications Committee next year. Peter Elias ’69, the current vice chair, will become chair of the committee at that time.
Greg Chittim led a discussion about future activities for the committee. Committee members discussed whether or not they could assist with communications about events on campus. It was recommended that the committee consider serving as the main communicator to councilors, webmasters, presidents, newsletter editors, and secretaries with cutting edge and helpful information (and prep information).
The committee joined the Alumni Council Student Affairs Committee to hear a presentation together by Gillian O'Connell ’15 and Esteban Castano ’14 about the "Improve Dartmouth" crowdsourcing site. Students and other members of the Dartmouth community can submit recommendations to "Improve Dartmouth" which are posted online for students and others to vote on. Anonymity is not allowed, but posted comments with the name of the author are. The six student moderators take the most popular ideas and submit them to their "administrative partners" for consideration. The administrative partners then post a response on the website in agreement or an explanation about why the recommendation cannot be implemented. The moderators track the progress of the ideas that have been submitted. They are also training future moderators of the site to guarantee its sustainability. They are also assisting the Presidential Steering Committee for Moving Dartmouth Forward to collect feedback and have set up a section of the site titled "Improving Dartmouth on the Ground". It provides a forum for discussion about student social life and an opportunity for all members of the Dartmouth community, including alumni, to participate.