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BY MARY PRAGER

In print | Published March 27, 2008

Most Swarthmore students share a certain apprehension about life after graduation. Thankfully, most of them manage just fine in the real world, with a little guidance from the alumni network. The Alumni Council, a group of alums who help strengthen student-alumni connections and help current students think about their post-college lives, is in the process of expanding its outreach to students.

While few students are well-informed about the Alumni Council, it has existed for over 70 years, serving the college in various ways. Every Swarthmore alum automatically becomes a member of the Alumni Association, which was started in 1882. In 1937, the Alumni Council emerged out of the Association as a leadership team. Council members are elected by the Association, serve three-year terms and meet on campus twice a year — once in the spring and again in the fall.

The Council is comprised of three branches, each of which pursues a different objective: Alumni Support, College Support and the Student Support Working Group. Alumni Support organizes get-togethers in various geographic regions across the nation and the world. College Support handles administrative affairs. The purpose of the Student Support Working Group, arguably the most relevant for current students, is, according to a document from the Alumni Council workbook provided by Alumni Relations Associate Director Astrid Devaney, to “develop initiatives which promote connections between students and alumni with the objective of providing support and guidance to students.”

While most people know that the Alumni Council works with Career Services to place students in externship programs, the Support Group also helps with the study abroad program, social responsibility initiatives and student/alumni connections in general.

According to Alumni Council member Amy Knowlton ’87, the Student Support group helps organize a dinner each time to Alumni Council meets on campus that gives an opportunity for students and alums to meet. “Historically, these dinners have focused on careers — students would have a chance to talk with alums from many different fields and career paths,” Knowlton said in an e-mail

For the first time ever, the Alumni Council Student Support group will be collaborating with the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility to organize a dinner on April 5. The dinner will center on the theme of civic and social responsibility, and students will have to the chance to speak with alumni who are involved in that field. A panel of speakers will discuss how they have incorporated civic and social responsibility into their work and post-college lives and how their activities at Swarthmore led them to their current activities.

According to Knowlton, who is organizing the event, the dinner will feature themed tables, including categories like nonprofit and health. “Students and alums will sit at the tables according to their interests and experience, and have further opportunity for discussion,” she said.

Devaney, one of two Alumni Relations Office staff assigned to working with the Alumni Council’s Student Support Group, said that the Saturday dinner is a great way for students to connect with alumni.

According to Devaney, the Student Support Group has become increasingly proactive in its efforts to reach out to students over the last ten years. “I think Swat’s always been good at connecting students with alumni, and this can always be improved on, but I think the current Council wants to connect with students on campus,” Devaney said.

The current president of the Alumni Council, Kevin Quigley ‘74, is looking forward to the upcoming dinner. "It’s a great opportunity," he said. “Typically we get 50 or so alumni and 75 to 90, maybe 100 students. It’s just a chance to connect and talk a little bit about common interests and values and talk a little bit about the world after Swarthmore and what are the kinds of opportunities out there for students.”

According to Quigley, over the past few years, organizations such as Earthlust, NOLArize, Genocide Intervention Network and War News Radio have made presentations that have been “rewarding, inspiring and motivating.”

Quigley, who is also the president of the National Peace Corps Association, comes to the college eight to nine times a year and is always struck by how students don’t have much of a sense of the alumni community, despite there being what he describes as a “natural network” for students.

“[Alums] share a lot of values [with students], a lot of similar outlooks about the world, and one of the things that we all find very rewarding is to be a resource for students, a resource about careers … there are 18,000 of us who’ve been privileged to have the Swarthmore experience, and I do think we have a lot of commonality,” he said.

The Alumni Council has contributed to the Swarthmore community not only as part of their efforts to connect students with alums, but also through other types of initiatives. According to Assistant Director of the Alumni Relations Nathan Stazewski, the Alumni Council was responsible for initiating the Web site where audio recordings of faculty lectures are posted, making them accessible to anyone.

The recordings are available in podcast form. The podcast is downloaded 1,400 times per month on average and gives alumni another way to keep in touch with school affairs, in addition to reading The Phoenix and the Daily Gazette, paying attention to the college Web site, participating in connection and extern/intern events, etc. “There are a lot of ways to stay connected,” Quigley said, “but the best by far is to get on campus and reconnect with students.”

Apart from planning the spring dinner, the members of the Alumni Council hope to connect with students through academic departments, according to Student Council Education Policy Representative Elisha Ann ‘08, who acts as a liaison between Student Council and the Alumni Council and communicates with them through e-mail. "They plan to coordinate mixers in departments that already have mixers, such as PoliSci and Bio, so they would invite alumni who’ve majored in bio so students can connect that way," Ann said.

The Alumni Council also works with the Career Services office. One of the major achievements of their collaboration so far has been the expansive alumni database available to students on the Career Services website. After registering, students can search alumni by occupation and geographic location. “It’s up to the students [to use these resources]—alums can reach out in ways like serving on the Alumni Council, participating in career fairs, hosting interns, going to connection events, reading materials, etc., but it’s in part also up to students to say ok, I recognize there’s a resource out there for me, let me tap into it,” Quigley said.

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