November 15–17, 2018
The newly named Alumni and Student Engagement Committee (formerly known as the Student Affairs Committee) met for the first time. The committee’s new name reflects a revised focus for the year — exploring the powerful interest in connections between alumni and students and looking at the life stages or transitions of students and recent graduates. For the past several years, especially last year, the committee brainstormed what its focus should be given that it was not directly advising or shaping student life. Since alumni are interested in both better understanding the student experience and providing relevant and powerful touchpoints for students with alumni (and given that the committee and Alumni Council work closely with Alumni Relations in the alumni space), the group’s leadership worked to develop a new mission statement and clear objectives and deliverables for this year.
The fall meeting focused on getting input on this mission and discussing potential areas of attention. The group coalesced around two ideas and will continue the work in working groups in the winter: 1) place-based connections for alumni and students (understanding FSPs, LSAs, etc. and creating structures to systematize and test programs) and 2) one-on-one meaningful connections and mentoring (reviewing what exists in particular across different centers and programs and putting together best practices and framework for alumni programs). We ended with engagement groups and working group leaders and plans to follow up with notes, next steps, and our first group calls.