Young Alumni Committee

The Committee on Young Alumni collects information and makes recommendations on programs for Young Alumni to further attract their interest and participation in Dartmouth alumni activities. The committee consists of a staff member from the Alumni Relations Office (Committee Secretary) and members of the Alumni Council. 

Report from the 203nd Alumni Council, December 1-3, 2011 

After introductions around the room, Simon Trablesi ’06 and Nicholas Russell ’00, ’10Tu gave a presentation that focused on identifying opportunities for maintaining Dartmouth’s relevance for young alumni. From the presentation, the committee agreed on the need for mentorship among alumni. Resources already exist for students and alumni to reach out and actively seek mentors, but the committee would like to set up a system that allows for a matching program or a mentorship system that is easily accessible. During the next few months, the subcommittee will work on exploring these options and figuring out how to best leverage existing resources.

The committee next discussed the effort of the Alumni 101 Handbook, led by Allie Miller ’10, Susan Matthews ’11, Terra Branson ’10, and Patrick McCarthy ’04, ’06Th. The book will have two components: a traditional handbook section on how to successfully transition from being a student to being an alumnus, with pointers on life as a young adult as well as Dartmouth alumni resources and volunteer opportunities; and a “goody bag” of retailers offering discounts. This book is on course to be released in time for June 2012 graduation.

Subcommittees will continue to work on their respective projects between Alumni Council sessions.

Report from the 202nd Alumni Council, May 19–21, 2011 

There were several items on the agenda:

1. Senior Vice President for Advancement Carrie Pelzel discussed the work done by the Young Alumni Committee on career services, the future of career services for alumni, and the development of a Dartmouth for Life/Life Skills program. She noted that the office of career services will look into supporting alumni once a new director is hired. This hire will be a priority for the new dean of the College. Within the Office of Alumni Relations, a new position will also be created to support alumni in other life skills such as finances and to strategize on how to keep Dartmouth alumni engaged throughout their entire lives.

2. After Pelzel, the floor was opened and the YAC discussed a variety of topics:

• The Class of 2010 is compiling a list of perks and discounts available to classmates from a variety of sources.
• The Alumni 101 booklet, which was originally drafted by the YAC, was being updated for this year and should be reviewed every year by the committee.
• The cohort of young alumni between 10 and 15 years out is not generally targeted by events or services offered by the College; it may be beneficial to segment the young alumni population into two or three groups: students to five years out, five to 10 years out, and 10 to 15 years out.   

3. After open discussion, the committee discussed the election of a new vice chair and the responsibilities of an alumni councilor. Amanda Brown ’07 was chosen to be the new vice chair of the committee by a unanimous vote.

4. The committee will address the following at its next meeting: transportation back to campus, communications around alumni involvement and perks, and the needs of the different young alumni cohorts.

Report from the 201st Alumni Council, December 1-4, 2010

Shounak Simlai ’05, vice chair of the Young Alumni Committee, opened the meeting with introductions of each attending committee member.

After introductions, Zack Chestnut ’08 recapped the work that the Young Alumni Committee, led on this front by Zack and Phil Mone ’02, had done regarding alumni career services. In the last couple years, there has been outreach to numerous College administrators, research done on alumni career services at other institutions, a presentation given to other members of the Alumni Council, and the creation of a career specific webpage (“Alumni Career Central”) on the Alumni Relations website. Now, with the Class of 2009 Career Services Intern project and Senior VP for Advancement Carrie Pelzel’s noted attention to the subject, it is even more apparent that things are coming to fruition.

Zack then introduced Jen Murray ’09, the Class of 2009 project chair, to discuss the ’09 Career Services Intern. This intern will probably work 12 hours a week and be charged with finding jobs, posting jobs on Dartboard, and serving as a general resource in Career Services for alumni and students. Currently, only a quarter of jobs submitted to Career Services actually get posted to Dartboard, so there is a need for a position like this. Ideally, the intern would be a student who could work for at least two to three terms and would report to one of the Presidential Fellows (currently, Jen). The Class of 2009 is still in talks with career services, but hopes to have this project rolled out in the spring.  

Pelzel then presented on the role that the advancement division will play in alumni career services. She noted that some institutions run their entire career services operations through their advancement/alumni relations divisions. She did not think this a good idea because should a budget crunch occur, students and alumni would both suffer from any cuts to career services. Instead, Pelzel is creating a new position in the Office of Alumni Relations that should not be viewed as a job but as an enterprise. Hiring for this position will begin once a new Alumni Relations VP has been hired; the new position should be filled by the end of the academic year. With this knowledge, the Young Alumni Committee is tabling the topic of alumni career services until the time warrants its return.

Jane Parkin Kullmann ’01 and David Wagner ’99 then presented on the regional club experience for young alumni. Based on the metrics, young alumni are well represented in regional club leadership. Some young alumni do appear to have difficulty in transitioning from the College to the world. There should be more and better messaging targeted at young alumni to help facilitate their transition period.

Mikee Guzman ’06 then followed with the topic of getting young alumni back to campus. At the last Young Alumni Committee meeting, Guzman had talked about the option for young alumni to stay in open dormitory rooms. With budget cuts and the reorganization of the College, this option is no longer available. In lieu of this, Guzman contacted about 70 other alumni and asked if they would be willing to host alumnus/a in their homes. Of those 70 people, 80 percent would be willing to host. Another idea is for a pot of money to be collected by the College, classes, or clubs to be used by young alumni looking to get back to Hanover. Also regarding transportation, Dartmouth College just launched a rideshare program called Dartmouth Zimride for employees. Because it uses the College’s web authentication, alumni and students are also able to utilize this service. Finally, another underutilized opportunity for young alumni to return to campus is to help professors with presentations, panels, and classes. There are many young alumni who have become experts in certain fields either through further study or experience from their careers.

Currently, the topics to be discussed at the next meeting are the Dartmouth Zimride rideshare program and the succession of the Young Alumni Committee leadership. Forms were distributed for Young Alumni Award nominations and the meeting was adjourned. 

Report from the 200th Alumni Council, 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.

Report from the 199th Alumni Council, December 3–5, 2009: 

In conference calls prior to this meeting, and in our lunchtime get-together in Hanover, the Young Alumni Committee has been focused on developing a recommendation for how Dartmouth could better support young alumni – and ultimately all alumni – with post-graduate career support. After introductions of new and returning committee members, Amy Henry '97 provided a brief history of the Young Alumni Committee's work on this issue. Specifically:

• We have heard about the realities that Career Services faces regarding satisfying the needs of the undergraduates with current resources (and concerns that any support the office offers alumni would divert resources from the undergraduates).
• We developed a survey designed to assess young alumni interest in and attitudes toward career service support, but ultimately decided not to distribute it. We were advised that we were not able to promise that we would actually be doing anything to address alumni's concerns, and did not want to set unrealistic expectations.
• Finally, we agreed that a smaller team, lead by Phil Mone '02 and Zach Chestnut '08, would investigate the issue further and take the first steps toward developing a recommendation from our committee on what we think should be done. Of course, our proposal will include turn-key recommendations of little to no cost and longer-term ideas.

Phil and Zach presented what they have done and investigated to date.

Then, Mimi Simpson of Alumni Relations provided a comprehensive introduction to all the resources that the College currently offers for alumni, along with a perspective on what seems to be working and what could be improved.

In response to both of these presentations, we had a rich conversation in which both veteran and new members offered perspectives on free tools that might be useful, ways we could communicate the existing offerings to alumni, etc.

As a next step, Phil and Zach are preparing a timeline that will allow us to develop a full proposal to present to the Alumni Council at the spring meeting. We anticipate that this proposal will include recommendations for 1) communication around current offerings, 2) short-term execution, and 3) longer-term consideration. We've also agreed to help Mimi's team pilot a few Web-based changes that are currently in the works.

We briefly discussed and plan to follow up on four other initiatives that the committee previously identified as important:

1. Helping young alumni find easier ways to get back to campus;
2. Helping clubs better engage young alumni;
3. Helping facilitate networking among alumni; and
4. Developing ideas to engage the older spectrum of young alumni who might have different needs for young alumni events (more family-oriented, etc.).

Finally, we distributed Young Alumni Award nomination forms to ensure that the young alumni across our networks are identified during the search process. 

Report from the 198th Alumni Council, 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.  

Report from the 197th Alumni Council, December 4–6, 2008: 

The committee will reassess the current economic climate, alumni needs, and resources available to Career Services (CS) before sending out a survey to examine how alumni utilize that office. Skip Sturman, CS director, and Karen Whittet, assistant director, shared details on alumni utilization: The number of unique contacts with alumni have increased from 18 to 25 percent this year. About one-third of CS resources are dedicated to graduate and professional school advising, areas primarily utilized by alumni. CS has also seen a change in the quality of calls from alumni, many of whom have lost or are concerned about losing their jobs. The increase in contact, however, has not been met with any increased resources dedicated to alumni – CS members currently provide these services of their own accord.

The committee will send an email to all councilors to forward to their constituents regarding the current services available to alumni and ways in which alumni can support CS resources for alumni.