Last night Matt and I went to the Denver Country Club to a Villanova alumni event. Former theatre department chair Fr. Peter Donohue is now Villanova's president, and he came to see the Denver alumni chapter last night. (Fr. Peter was on my dissertation committee and kept me honest and accurate regarding the Catholic aspects of my dissertation in addition to providing theatrical expertise.)
It was really excellent to see him, and he is clearly thriving in his new job. He's a master of the kind of minutiae that make a great president--fabulous with names, faces, and details of people's personal lives, very charismatic, and a smooth politician. Both Matt and I enjoyed watching a master at work. :)
Besides being bowled over by the beauty of the country club and the general wealth of the surrounding atmosphere, it was really cool to see and meet that many other alums. Apparently there are over 300 Villanova alums in the Denver metro area, fairly surprising since it's such a small school with a primarily Northeast-based (60%) population. Most of the people there were older than us by a good few decades, but there were a few alums younger than myself who were there with parents who were also alums.
I've been tapped into the Creighton alumni community for some time because my family pretty much all did their undergraduate work there or at the sister school of Duchesne back in the days before women were admitted. I've got pretty strong ties to my undergrad school, but this was the first time I've attended anything related to my graduate work. Since I work at CU I'm unlikely to participate in many of the CU alumni events because I already know what is going on around campus. Also, by working here I'm already serving (at lower than market wages) so I feel like I'm giving them time and talent instead of treasure, so to speak.
As someone who works at a Research One state school, I know how important it is to maintain good relations with alums because like it or not we depend on them partially for economic support since the state does such a crummy job of funding higher education. I could articulate the many ways CU doesn't fulfill its responsibilities toward alums but I think there are people who are working on those issues, so I don't want to critique before they have a chance to get reforms in place.
Last night was so interesting for me because it reminded me so much of why my Catholic liberal-arts background has made me so much of who I am. Listening to Fr. Peter talk about service, community, and other ideals made me realize why Catholic colleges are often so successful in their alumni relations. The day after we graduate, they treat us as though they'd be proud to hire us back, and make sure they're right there for help from recommendation letters to job placement services. My past schools and departments openly stated they were proud of my skills and felt they'd trained me sufficiently to be good enough to work anywhere, and they made me feel that way too. They treated me, when I was no longer a student, as a valued member of the community who still represented them in the larger world. Whether I stayed in the local area or moved far away to take a job, the support network was still available, both from Creighton and from Villanova.
CU and other state schools could definitely take a page from that playbook. My limited experience of Research Ones is that they divide their grads into the ones who "succeed" (move far away, get on the tenure track, become "famous" or wealthy) and the ones who "fail" (stay local/ regional, are 'exploited' by working for lesser-known or less prestigious schools and companies, remain in the middle class). They don't seem interested in students as human beings after graduation and do relatively little to encourage a sense of continued community. One "Homecoming" weekend a year doesn't do much, especially for people who could care less about football. Now, I maintain good relationships and even some friendships with my former academic department, and I have a lot of good things to say about my student experiences here. My larger point is: I'm a proud alum of my Catholic schools, but I'm less likely to participate here at CU as an alum.
What have other people's alumni experiences been like, love, hate, or neutral?
2 comments:
Well as a 3 time grad from the University of Texas, I have to say they do a great job of keeping up with alums and continuing to keep the University community intact well beyond graduation. And this is much more than just Homecoming (I think there is such a concept at Texas...every home game is Homecoming) weekend and the MasterCard they want to sell me. I get semi annual calls from different offices and about every month emails from different parts of the university to keep me up to date with the current events and transitions at the University. Be they the new Art Gallery expanding or another professor being awarded or otherwise recognized. Yes this is often followed by a request for money, but that is a request.
We refer to ourselves as Texas Exes (and this predates the song by nearly 100 years). But that is simply an extension of the university beyond the 40 acres of the campus. Yes the Exes do a lot with football and other sports, but they many other things, from career services to funding more than 600 scholarships a year. And they do this to help make the UT community work for itself, both in supporting a great University and in supporting the product that University produces, the exes. They know there are only so many ways we can become wealthy enough to endow a chair or build a building. But if they can help us make that difference and become just that much more successful in what we can do, we might just send them a bigger check this next time.
I agree with Niall that CU may not be representative of big research universities in general.
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