The Power of Alumni

There are lots of reasons why Ship's CS and Engineering programs are strong, but today I am thankful for alumni.

Help For Our Programs

Last Friday we had our bi-annual Industrial Advisory Council (IAC) meeting and I ALWAYS come out of them energized!  Our IAC is made up of alumni and is tasked with helping us keep our program current so that our students are well-sought after when they graduate.  We talk to them about EVERYTHING: curriculum, extra-curricular activities, enrollments, budgets, etc.  And, as part of our assessment process, they review student projects giving broad feedback to the faculty about curriculum and giving individual coaching to the students.

I am sure it is obvious why the IAC is really valuable to us, but this time was unique.  Evidence of their impact can be seen in my todo list when they left.  These are but a few of the action items I got from them:

• Add ethics objectives (which they formulated) to each of the Engineering Seminars
• Share a google drive folder with them so that we can collaborate between meetings
• Share a google drive folder with seniors' resumes so they can help our students find jobs
• Gather some different statistics from our enrollment data so they can help us analyze how some admissions changes are affecting our enrollments
• Give one member access to our servers so he can set up a tool the software engineering students should be using
• Create a new student club tasked with sponsoring events like: resume workshops, outside speakers (with many IAC volunteers), job shadowing (with many IAC volunteers).
• Create a sub-committee of the IAC tasked with find a way to help our female students thrive in a male-dominated freshman experience.

The most amazing thing for me this time is that my action items aren't all "Carol go do something" items.  Many of the tasks I got were "Set up something so someone on the IAC can do something valuable."  They have always given us great help during our meetings - this time, they committed to helping us all year log.  Wow!

Help For Our Students

In addition to the big, program-related help, alumni can have incredible influence when they interact with our students.  Last week we had the Great T-Shirt Giveway where we give every student a shirt that our alumni pay for.  The alumni come back and hand out the shirts as a way of saying, "You are now part of a community.  You can do this and be successful like I am."  That can be a very powerful message for freshman this time of year.

I always try to arrange a speaker for this even and this year we had an alumnus, Sarah Joseph, give a talk on "The Value of the Struggle."  We have been talking with our students a lot about persisting when things are hard and Sarah is a GREAT example of someone who worked hard and, as a result, has built a successful career with the Department of Defense.  Her talk was right on point and incredibly valuable. (I wish I had filmed it!) As evidence of its power, a group of students stayed after to talk with her until I had to kick them out because we lost the room. 

Help for Specific Courses

This semester, alumni are also helping us create a new and exciting class:  Interdisciplinary Development.  The goal is for our students to work with students outside of our department to build something those students need.  For our first try, we are working with Ship's yearbook committee to build a website version of the yearbook.  This must be exciting for alumni, too, because I have been helped by multiple alumni in looking for the right development tools and process for this course.  All of my helpers have been supportive in helping me pick technologies and I have been impressed that they are being sensitive to the pedagogic goals of the course.   It will be a MUCH better course because they have taken the time to consult with me about so many possibilities.

Bottom Line

Almost every time an alumnus comes campus and engages with either faculty or students, the benefit is amazing.  I am so grateful that "Ship Family" includes our alumni because they are a significant part of the reason our programs are successful.