Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted to share with you a new initiative between the Office of Alumni Relations and the Office of the Provost. We know that faculty members often invite alumni to present in their classes (in person or, particularly right now, via Zoom). There had been no process in place to track and acknowledge these alumni speakers, which is regrettable as we want to better understand the ways in which alumni volunteer for the College. We also seek to have a more complete record of how each individual alumnus/a engages with the College.
We are asking for your help in collecting and maintaining more complete alumni volunteer data and more consistently acknowledging volunteer service. Alumni Relations would like to provide a gift to each of these volunteers that could be given as a thank you from the faculty member and on behalf of the College. All costs related to the gifts, including mailing, would be covered by Alumni Relations. Once we return to in-person classes, providing the gift to the faculty member to present to the speaker in person is also an option.
To make this process as easy as possible for you, we have created a short form that each faculty member can complete when an alumnus/a presenter is planned for a class. We encourage you to support this effort acknowledging all our alumni volunteers for their contributions.
John Meier, Provost
Rachel Nelson Moeller, Executive Director of Alumni Relations