Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2019

EARLY LAST YEAR, the Southwestern Alumni Council began a series of conversations with the SUCenter for Career &Professional Development exploringways that alumni and theUniversity could work together to enhance the student experience and help young alumni prepare for the workplace. Our efforts have been focused on certain areas that the University has identified as important for the future success of its graduates. From these talks, the Alumni Council and SUhave identified three projects for alumni–university partnerships. The Alumni Council is developing these initiatives and hopes to create models that canbe sustained over time and replicatedwith other new initiatives. It will take time to do thiswork, but we hope that the final products will open the door to a new type of relationship between our alumni community and theUniversity, witha lasting impact on its students. Here are our initiatives: First-generation students Approximately 20%of the students at Southwestern are in the first generation of their families to attend college. The needs of these students can be unique, andweareseekingalumniwhowerefirst-generation students themselves to assist in supporting these students. Internships and high-impact experiences Southwestern has prioritized the creation of high-impact experiences for its students. This includes a desire to place as many students as possible into meaningful internships during their time at Southwestern. This effort will involve the recruitment of Southwestern graduates and others to create and offer those internships. Professional-development series for young alumni TheAlumni Council envisions a series ofworkshops or webinars to benefit young alumni and students in their professional careers. Hosted inGeorgetown or othermetropolitan areas, theworkshop sessions will be recordedandarchivedonline to create adata- base of resources for our younger alumni. Surveys gathering areas of interest for workshop topics and potential speakers will be distributed later this spring and next fall. To our knowledge, this effort to create lasting structures for alumni involvement is the first of its kind at SU. To some extent, we are testing the capacity of the Alumni Association to do this sort of thing. These three endeavors are necessarily focused, but through this work, we hope to learn howto better engage the alumni community inother ways as well. We invite anyone with an interest in one of these three initiatives to contact alumni@ southwestern.edu . Stay tuned.Wewill sharemore about this work in the near future. The activities of the Alumni Association are coordinated by the Alumni Council, which comprises 15 alumni officers who serve two-year terms. A L U M N I A S S O C I AT I O N Alumni Council Moves into NewEra B Y C H A R L I E O L S O N ' 7 8 Homecoming and Shilling Lecture Oct. 4–6, 2019 Candlelight Dec. 5, 2019 Charter Weekend Feb. 7–9, 2020 Spring Family Day Feb. 22, 2020 Greek Reunion Weekend April 3–4, 2020 Legacy Visit Day June 19, 2020 Mark your calendar for these upcoming events in the 2019–2020 academic year: Visit www.southwestern.edu to view the University calendar, which includes athletics events, fine-arts performances, local chapter events in your area, and other University functions. 8 SOUTHWESTERN President, Southwestern University Alumni Association