The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

IHEs Targeting Young Alumni

More than ever, college alumni younger than 35 are being cultivated as potential sources of money by the universities, which find that their traditional mainstay of support, state funding, is failing to keep pace with needs. Alumni associations are leading the charge, reinventing themselves to connect better with younger graduates. The associations are branching out far beyond the glossy, semiannual magazine and football-watching parties at local bars. They're sponsoring career-networking events and using social Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Read more at:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/10/31/20091031alumni1030.html

Recession Hitting College Graduates Hard

Amid worse-than-expected job losses and an unemployment rate that hit 9.8% last month, new Labor Department data Friday showed the 21-month recession is taking a greater toll on college graduates than high school dropouts. You're still far more likely to be employed with a bachelor's degree than if you're a high school dropout. But in a telling sign of the breadth of the recession, the latest data also indicate that the numbers of unemployed jobseekers are growing fastest among Americans with higher education. Read more at: http://www.jsonline.com/business/63359637.html

Recession Brings More Alumni To Career Services

Typically, undergraduate institutions offer standard-fare golf tournaments and wine-tasting reunions — hoping to tap nostalgia and shake loose donations. Now, they are providing an expanding array of career services, including panels of alumni experts, professional affinity networks, personal coaching and job listings, support that is becoming a fixture of business and law programs. Old school ties, they suggest, can have new currency, even urgency. Magnanimous, yes; selfless, no. Career guidance for older alumni can benefit schools as well. It freshens loyalties that may have been mothballed for decades. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/fashion/02alumni.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Baylor Moves Towards Independent Alumni Association

Baylor University has removed the link to the Baylor Alumni Association’s Web site from the school’s Web site and removed the group from its toll-free phone line and the university’s e-mail system. Baylor officials say the actions, made since a May 26 meeting between the school and BAA, were taken as part of a mutually agreed upon move toward complete independence for the alumni association. Alumni association officials, though, say that there was no agreement to take these most recent steps after the association became 100 percent financially and operationally independent from the university in June 2008. Read more at:
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/07/19/07192009wacbayloralumni.html?imw=Y

Bringing Alumni Back To Campus For Service Days

Alumni service days are fast becoming a rite of spring for colleges and their graduates across the country. At least 10 schools have launched such days in the past two years and plan annual events. Service-day activities vary according to local needs and alums' passions. In their first service days this year, Kent State University alums sorted clothing to hand out in Cleveland and painted the home of an owner in need in Canton. Clemson University grads sorted provisions at food banks in Atlanta and Orlando. Read more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-10-alumniservice_N.htm

Career Centers Cope With Out-Of-Work Alumni And Graduating Seniors

All across the region, colleges and universities are reporting overwhelming numbers of out-of-work alumni returning to campus for career counseling. At Stony Brook University, for example, the career center saw 247 alumni in the first three months of this school year, compared to 147 for all of last year. The demand is spawning a slew of new programs - from discount graduate-school tuition for recently laid-off alums of St. John's University to special alumni hours at the Farmingdale State career center. Still, it is a struggle, officials say, to serve graduating seniors looking for their first job and alumni unexpectedly back on the job market for the first time in decades. Read more at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-lialum295981040dec29,0,2642289.story

Community Colleges See Need To Reach Out To Alumni

After years of essentially neglecting their alumni, California's community colleges are trying to rekindle a connection. Two organizations have launched the first statewide alumni magazine for two-year schools, part of a larger aim to gain the allegiance of millions of former students. College leaders are hoping to gain financial and professional support from alumni. But sparse resources — and a lack of planning — have prevented schools from keeping in touch with former students. Read more at:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/teens/ci_10890809?nclick_check=1

Alumni Group Urges Harvard To Use Its Endowment In New Ways

For three years, a handful of Harvard University alumni have waged a quiet effort to persuade the university to expand its mission far beyond its Cambridge campus, the students it educates there and the multitude of research labs, libraries and other facilities available to them. They call themselves Harvard Alumni for Social Action, or HASA, and their goal is to prod the university to use its vast wealth, including its $35 billion endowment, in unprecedented ways, like supporting struggling colleges in Africa. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/education/03harvard.html?_r=3&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Alumni Magazines Re-engineer For The Facebook Generation

The advent of social networking on the Internet has created a quandary for higher education alumni magazines, which want to maintain a conversation with alumni but have been slow to embrace the Web. Most schools have set up password-protected sites where graduates can change their contact information, drop a class note or donate money. But younger alumni, accustomed to second-by-second updates from friends and classmates, are exchanging information in real time on Facebook and MySpace. Why wait for your alma mater to churn out a quarterly journal when you can Twitter all day? Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/media/02alumni.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss