May 14–16, 2009
The Young Alumni Committee held an abbreviated meeting just prior to Friday's lunch, due to shifts in schedule to accommodate Dr. Kim's speech to the Alumni Council. In that time, we revisited an ongoing conversation about alumni career services, briefly discussed club leadership opportunities for young alumni, and held an election for our new co-chair.
The committee has been discussing how to fill a need that has become increasingly important for young alumni over the past two sessions: career services specifically geared to alumni. Previous initiatives suggested or begun by the committee have been put on hold due to limited resources at the College. At this meeting, Rex Morey '99, with the Office of Alumni Relations, gave us a "state of" report that included an update on recent budget cuts affecting career services, which will make it even more difficult to obtain resources for alumni. Rex reviewed Dartboard, the update to MonsterTrak, and we briefly discussed ways to make it more relevant to young alumni (e.g., creating an alumni sign-in process that doesn't require entering a Hinman Box; encouraging alumni to post job listings that would be more appropriate to young alumni rather than undergraduates). The committee discussed ways to move this initiative forward, knowing that action might have to wait until the budget rebounds. Zach Chestnut '08 and Phil Mone '02 agreed to lead a subcommittee that would conduct research on previous efforts, other schools' programs, etc., and create a proposal that would recommend a solution, including budget requirements, etc. Ideally, we could workshop this during our next meeting, and have something to present to the larger council and appropriate members of the administration.
While some concern was expressed during our last meeting about opportunities for younger alumni to get involved in club leadership, a brief discussion by committee members, along with a discussion of the way clubs work by Steve Donovan of Alumni Relations, seemed to conclude with an understanding that many of the larger clubs have done a great job not only keeping younger alumni engaged, but also supporting their involvement at the highest levels of their organizations (including a committee member of our own who is the president-elect of the Boston Club!).
Amy Henry '97 will become the 2009-2010 chair and Susi Kandel '00 was elected vice chair of the Young Alumni Committee.