Committee 

May 20–22, 2010

Amy Henry ’97 opened the Young Alumni Committee meeting with introductions and a recap of the fall meeting followed by a general outline of the agenda: subcommittees would report on career services, networking opportunities, regional club opportunities, and opportunities to get alumni to campus; new business would be addressed; and a new vice chair of the committee would be confirmed.

Zack Chestnut ’07 began the discussion of career services for young alumni with a presentation he and Phil Mone ’02 prepared for the general assembly meeting. The presentation highlighted some of the progress that has been made. There have been meetings with key administrators (including Mimi Simpson ’89Tu, alumni relations executive officer; Lynne Gaudet ’81, director of alumni leadership; Skip Sturman, director of career services; and Deb Klenotic, director of web communications), the creation of the Alumni Career Central landing page on the Alumni Relations website (which centralizes numerous links to career resources and tools offered by the College), and more effort and thought being brought to this topic.

The discussion then shifted into ways of making the Dartmouth network more useful. Ideas included utilizing the recent administrative reorganization to reallocate resources and broaden the focus of career services; paying attention to strategic lifecycle management, in which the entire Dartmouth experience is viewed as a whole (from prospective student to alumnus) and someone such as President Kim stresses the importance of this to students and alumni; using class dues across the young alumni classes to fund a part-time position to provide career services to alumni; utilizing class newsletters and websites to profile the career trajectories of successful alumni who would be willing to help classmates (such as with the Class of 2007); and looking to the regional clubs to provide opportunities for young alumni to meet with successful older alumni who can share their experiences and offer advice. It was concluded that the Young Alumni Committee should identify five things that each class and club could do to improve connections within the Dartmouth network.

David Wagner ’99 and Jane Parkin Kullman ’01 presented on opportunities for young alumni to get involved at the regional club and affiliated group level. A document comparing young alum leadership to general club leadership was distributed, but nothing too surprising was found. Young alumni make up roughly 20 percent of regional club leadership and around 50 percent of affiliated group leadership. One of the key ways to keep young alumni involved is to stress the importance of updated contact information in the Vox Online Network (VON) since many clubs are moving to the Harris email marketing tool, which pulls directly from this.

Mikee Guzman ’06 then presented on ways of getting young alumni to campus. In talking to the Office of Residential Life he discovered that alumni can stay in dorms that are available. The only caveat is that they have to get insurance on top of the room fee. He also learned that classes can use DOC cabins by purchasing a class DOC membership, which would require that the interested class pay a lump sum and provide a point person.

Due to the limited time, the report on “older” young alumni opportunities and new business were set aside for a later date. The meeting ended with the confirmation of the new vice chair Shounak Simlai ’05, ’07Th. Susi Kandel ’00 will chair the committee next year.