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Posted 6/1/2005 10:19 PM Updated 6/7/2005 9:49 PM
Alumni turn to alma mater
By Alvin P. Sanoff, Special for USA TODAY
Seven years after he graduated from college in 1996 with a degree in business management, Chris Springer was working at a high-powered consulting firm in suburban Washington, D.C. But he was dissatisfied and felt it was time to take stock of his career.
Colleges and universities have come to realize that their relationship with their alumni is a two-way street.
Abilene Reporter-News via AP
Springer turned to what once would have seemed an unlikely source for advice — his alma mater, Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.
Bucknell, like a growing number of colleges and universities, has a staff member in its career office who works exclusively with alumni. She put Springer through a series of exercises designed to help him discover what he wanted to do with his life, critiqued his résumé and helped him connect with Bucknell's extensive alumni network.
Thanks to that assistance, Springer was not only able to settle on an industry he wanted to work in, but also the firm he wanted to work for, Rohm and Haas, a specialty chemical company headquartered in Philadelphia. Springer, 31, who is a market manager for the firm, says that "without Bucknell's help, I would not have known this is where I wanted to be."
As this year's college seniors pick up their diplomas, many of them may think that their future relationship with their alma mater will be limited to periodic class reunions and solicitations for funds. That may have been true in the past, but no longer.
Colleges and universities have come to realize that their relationship with their alumni is a two-way street. If they want support from their graduates, they must give them something back in return.
"Schools are taking seriously the question of what's in it for the alumni," says Steve Calvert, director of alumni relations at the University of Denver.
They now understand, he says, that it is not the faculty and staff but the alumni who are "the permanent constituency" of the university.
The change in attitude comes at a time when the proportion of alumni who contribute to their alma mater is in decline — from 13.1% in 2002 to 12.4% last year.
To build relations with graduates, colleges are launching initiatives to address a range of issues alumni face as they move through different life stages, including motherhood and retirement. "We are trying to figure out what is it that will make alumni support their institution," says Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association in Pasadena, Calif.
The initiatives reflect a growing awareness by colleges that those who earned their degrees in the past two decades have different expectations from their alma mater than their predecessors. Earlier alumni, says Shaindlin, were loyal to their college "because that's what they were supposed to do." But today's graduates are more hard-nosed. They make a judgment on whether engaging with their alma mater is worth "the investment of their time, energy and money," Shaindlin says.
Newer graduates also have different communication needs. They prefer that their alma mater communicate with them electronically rather than through the mail and print publications. Many colleges are establishing online communities for alumni and allowing them to set up their own customized pages on a special part of the institution's Web site. Younger graduates "are so fluid in their lifestyle that communicating with them has to be electronic," says Wayne Cozart, director of alumni activities at the University of Virginia Alumni Association in Charlottesville.
But by far the highest priority for the new generation of alumni is career counseling.
"Career services is at the top of the list for every alumni body," Calvert says. That was confirmed by a survey of recent grads by the University of Texas-Austin alumni association. Texas, like many univer- sities, now has a program for graduates to come in for individual or group counseling and to use an alumni career network.
The demand for career counseling is a reflection of the way the working world has changed. Researchers say that, on average, new college graduates will have several careers and up to a dozen jobs during their working life.
"We know our alumni will never again have linear career paths," says Carter Hopkins, director of the Alumni Career Services Center at the University of Virginia. "It's nice for them to be able to go back to a place they can trust and get advice geared for their success."
Need for advice is ongoing
Hopkins says that alums who have been out of school for 20 years come in for advice on how to market themselves more effectively so they can advance in their field, while more recent alums are thinking about graduate school and need guidance on how to do that while juggling careers and families. In other instances, a couple might want to relocate and ask how to do that while landing good jobs. "I never know what I will be called on to give advice about," she says.
Even colleges that don't have a staff member in the career office dedicated specifically to assisting alumni go the extra mile to help graduates. "My feeling is that we are not shy about asking alumni to open their checkbooks, so we should be willing to provide assistance in other ways whenever possible," says Warren Kistner, career center director at Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington.
One of those alumni is Bruce Clark, 29, an art major who graduated in 1997. Clark had held a series of jobs ranging from teaching at a church-related private school to supervising crews for a painting company when he started to say to himself: "I have an Illinois Wesleyan degree, and house painting is not where I want to go." Since he still lived near the campus, he decided to go to Kistner for help.
Kistner helped Clark determine that his interests lay in architecture and arranged for Clark to meet with a local architect who provided a close-up view of the profession.
In the fall, he will be a graduate student in the architecture program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "Warren helped bring focus to the intrinsic motivations I had," he says.
In today's uncertain economic environment, some institutions find themselves advising alumni who have lost their jobs as a result of downsizing. When Kodak and other large employers in Rochester, N.Y., laid off thousands of workers, the Rochester Institute of Technology realized that many of the newly unemployed were alums, some of whom had not been on the job market for 30 years. RIT beefed up its career staff to provide counseling and "triage" and to make sure graduates knew that they were part of a 100,000-person alumni network that could assist them.
The Internet has made career networking much easier. RIT, like many colleges and universities, has set up a secure Web site where graduates can post and search for jobs. "If someone is looking to locate in San Diego, they can find all the graduates in the area to touch base with for assistance and employment," says Kelly Redder, executive director of alumni relations.
Advising alumni about their careers is just one of the life issues that colleges are addressing. Some women's colleges are offering advice to new mothers, to the newly divorced and to those who are re-entering the job market after being stay-at-home moms. "Where women are stuck on their life path, we help provide resources for them," says Folly Patterson of the Center for Work and Service at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
'Mater' is there for moms
Barnard College in New York has established a program called "Sweet Mother" — "alma mater" means "nourishing mother" in Latin — specifically to help with issues related to motherhood. For those further along in life, Barnard has developed "Project Continuum" to help with issues related to retirement such as financial planning and transitioning to a part-time career.
The programs, held mostly in New York, have each drawn about 1,000 graduates. Says Roberta Albert, Barnard's director of alumnae affairs: "We wanted to create programs that caused our alumnae to turn back to Barnard when they entered a new space in life."
Ultimately, the success of all these initiatives will be measured less by the help they provide than by whether they foster ties between graduates and their alma mater that lead to more generous giving. Initial signs are promising. The University of Virginia, for example, has seen a rise in giving by younger classes. Says Cozart: "I think this will pay off in spades."
). The alumni giving has everything to do with financial stability and operating budgets for most schools. For a private school a TON of our money has to come from outside sources... apart from the monies that students generate through their federal loans, LU does not get a dime from the states. State schools have always been subsidized by the government. To me... LU has proven far more than any state school when you look at our growth. This place is booming. Frankly (as an alumni) I don't care where the money comes from as long as it's coming in. 
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