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New Alumni Online Community allows ETSU grads to
keep in touch
JOHNSON CITY – A new Alumni Online Community has
been launched to allow East Tennessee State University graduates
to keep in touch with the university and with each other.
According to Joe Smith, director of alumni records, online
communities and directories are a growing trend among large
public institutions and private colleges throughout the country,
largely as a means to replace bulky and expensive printed
directories. However, the enhanced connectivity these systems
allow for both alumni and the university is the biggest advantage,
he said. “Like in other industries, technology has
created opportunities to improve how we do business.”
Alumni may visit the site ( www.ETSUAlumni.org)
to access its two main components: an online directory of
graduates and a “community” for interaction.
After registering, alumni may set up a personal profile
with information on their families, careers, special interests
and more, as well as post recent photographs. Each graduate
can determine how much or how little of their personal information
appears in the public profile which may be viewed by other
members. Within this directory alumni may locate and contact
friends they’ve not seen or spoken to in years. There
is a color coded “pager” system that both identifies
the usage of other registrants and allows members to reach
other users online within the community.
There are two special features that help personalize the
site for users. Registered users have the ability to create
a “Personal Pals” list of special friends within
the community and join chapters. The chapters section created
by former student organizations and affinity groups in partnership
with the Alumni Association allows members of organizations,
such as fraternities, sororities, academic or special interest
clubs, athletic team alumni, or other groups, to have a web
presence at ETSUAlumni.org. These groups can personalize
colors, create banners and add links to their own local and
national Web sites from the online community.
The system also allows alumni and friends to go online to
make financial gifts to the university, register for official
Alumni events and pay any admission charges for such online.
Participating alumni do not need to worry about their privacy
being compromised. Smith explained that there are open and
closed parts of the site, with directory information being
closed to non-alumni and unregistered visitors as a way to
prevent personal information, such as e-mail addresses and
phone numbers, from being accessed by potential spammers.
“This is a good opportunity for us to offer our alumni
an important service,” Smith said. “Our graduates,
particularly from the past decade have learned to incorporate
the internet into the traditional academic study and they
subsequently have higher expectations for the websites they
visit and use.”
The extra connectivity not only benefits alumni, but also
the ETSU Alumni Office, which will use the online community
to make their record-keeping efforts more efficient. “On
the back-end, we can periodically download updates back to
our system,” Smith said.
In addition, the Alumni Office can send “E-letters,” or
newsletters by e-mail, to update alumni on recent developments
at the university and to inform them of upcoming events. “We
don’t intend to bombard users with information they
do not need,” Smith said, “because they will
ultimately have the ability to choose what services are important
to them.” This is also an area accessible to visitors
and non-members.
The ETSU Alumni Office has realigned its publication budget
to do more online, according to Bob Plummer, associate vice
president for University Advancement and Alumni and executive
director of the ETSU Alumni Association. In addition to replacing
the printed directories, the new online community could result
in reduced costs for the publication of ETSU Today,
the university’s alumni magazine, by serving as the
primary outlet for “Class Notes.” This popular
section of the magazine features personal and professional
news sent in by alumni, such as new jobs, marriages, births
and other significant occurrences. “It consumes a great
deal of space in the magazine, and allowing the new online
community to eventually become the primary outlet for “Class
Notes” news could mean fewer pages, and therefore less
cost, for the magazine” said Plummer. “There
are also no limits online in terms of space and timeliness.”
In the new system, visitors may search “Class Notes” based
on year and type – marriages, births, employment, obituaries,
and other categories.
Smith says that as more financial resources become available,
ETSU may be able to expand the features offered through the
Alumni Online Community. Items that could be added include
a calendar, career center, questionnaires and opinion polls,
merchandising, and more.
ETSU selected Internet Association Corp. of Akron, Ohio,
to develop and support its Alumni Online Community. IAC’s
collegiate clients include ETSU’s fellow Tennessee
Board of Regents institutions Tennessee Tech, Middle Tennessee
State and Austin Peay State universities, along with such
schools as University of Missouri, Xavier, the University
of Miami ( Ohio), Clemson, the Columbia University School
of Law and the College of William and Mary. Several of their
clients’ online communities have been featured in CASE
Currents, the magazine of the Council for Advancement
and Support of Education, as award winning alumni sites.
At the same time that the online community was being developed,
major enhancements were also being made to the overall University
Advancement Web site ( www.etsu.edu/advance/),
which includes the main Alumni site ( www.etsu.edu/alumni/).
The Alumni Online Community is “the first major addition
to our alumni offerings since the ETSU Pride Week program
started in 1997,” said Smith.
He explained that the new system will help meet the expectations
of alumni, especially newer alumni who are highly accustomed
to communicating with others and conducting business online.
“This is another important piece of the puzzle for
us,” said Richard Manahan, vice president for University
Advancement and executive vice president of the ETSU Foundation. “If
we provide more opportunities for alumni to remain engaged
with the university, they’re more likely to come back,
participate and help our Foundation and Alumni Association
raise the margin of excellence. We’re hoping that new
electronic trends will ultimately help us better serve our
graduates.”
For more information, call the ETSU Alumni Office at (423)
439-4218.
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