Avenues Connect Alumni with Students

By Cara Miller

Anderson University is often acclaimed for its small class sizes, experienced professors, state-of-the-art technology, and other tools that help students get the best education and college experience possible. But the big question for most students and their parents is about job opportunities. Especially in today’s struggling economy and competitive job market, students are wondering how getting the grades and credits they need will translate into getting a good job following graduation. Will they be among the lucky ones to embark on a rewarding career right out of college, or will they struggle to find job openings and schedule interviews?

AU has already been providing resources to students for this very thing. For years, the Career Development Center has helped students develop a career plan along with the skill sets they need to achieve their goals. Plus, the various departments on campus have always focused on providing their majors with hands-on experience and leads on quality internships. But recently, the university has taken yet another approach to helping both students and alumni find valuable job connections. The Career Development Center and the Alumni Office have teamed up to create an alumni mentor network, which connects current students and recent graduates with experienced alumni who can help them find jobs or give them useful information about a particular industry, company, location, or graduate school.

Alumni Office director Ben Davis explains, “We know that one of the ways we can play a vital role in a student’s life and add value to their experience is by linking them to alumni who are in the profession or industry that the student will be entering. Alumni will act as a resource to students by sharing their insights on what an industry is like, what some of the trends are, how students should be preparing to enter the workforce in that industry, etc. Alumni are the ones who have been there and have the experience, and because they share a common bond with the student – their alma mater – we find that alums, when they are asked to serve in this kind of role, are very willing to do so.”

It all started a couple years ago when the INvision AU program was initiated through an Eli Lilly grant. Developed as a means for helping students find internships and job placement in Indiana, INvision AU incorporates several components, one of which is alumni mentoring. Working alongside the Alumni Office, the INvision AU office developed a database of approximately 80 alumni who had signed up to be mentors for undergrad students. The database was compiled in the College Central Network Web site, and whenever a student came to the INvision AU office or the Career Development Center looking for internship or job leads, they were directed to the Web site, where they would be able to search the database and hopefully come up with the name and contact information of an alum who could help them.

However, the system was flawed, as Maryann Coty, director of the Career Development Center, explains. “What was happening was that students weren’t doing their part. Alums who had signed up for the database were saying that they never had any undergraduate students actually contacting them.”

Davis says that the original launch was a great idea at perhaps the wrong time. "On the one hand, we knew this whole concept of linking students with alumni professionals was important," he says, "but it wasn't a strategy that we had put a lot of resources into, and we weren't staffed to handle it." Now, with the addition of Fry's position and a more robust alumni programming model in place, he is optimistic about the prospects.

As the INvision AU program looks to the future, it has decided to reconstruct the mentoring program. Because the original Eli Lilly grant for the INvision AU program ended in June 2007, Coty recently wrote a sustaining grant proposal to Eli Lilly asking that the grant be extended for another four years. As part of that grant proposal, the university committed to spending more time and resources on developing a functioning alumni mentor network. The Lilly Endowment accepted the university’s proposal, and the Alumni Office and the Career Development Center have since been working together to make the new alumni mentor network a reality.

Unofficially, the new program started at graduation last year when Davis helped give graduates the “pre-walk talk” as they lined up before the commencement ceremony. “We give kind of a final speech before they walk off into the sunset,” says Davis. “One of the things we talked about was what kind of an alumni network they have out there who can be resources to them, what that means, and how they can take advantage of that. We also encouraged them to contact us for help making a connection with an alum.”

The new graduates took Davis up on his offer as he was fielding calls and emails throughout the summer from recent alumni who either needed help finding a job or who already had a job and wanted to find an AU alum in the area to which they were moving. The requests continued into the school year, and as the Career Development Center began sharing this new initiative with students, the Alumni Office began getting even more requests.

Fortunately, the new grant from the Lilly Endowment has provided funds to create a new position on campus charged with fielding such requests along with helping to build and maintain the new alumni mentor network. Ed Fry BA ’93, MTS ’05 was hired in January as the alumni connections coordinator, focusing exclusively on matching up students with alumni who can provide mentoring, internship connections, and job opportunities.

Fry brings a number of qualifications to this new position. Not only is he an AU grad with a heart for the university, but he also has worked in several different industries and locations, which means he has his own network of contacts to share with students. He has been in the music industry in Nashville, worship and youth ministry in Ohio, church planting in Chicago, and most recently, a federal contracting executive in Anderson. In spite of this impressive résumé, Fry says that coming back to work for the university is a lot like coming home and that he looks forward to helping students and alumni make connections.

“Community to me is everything," he says. "If you have an attachment to AU, then this is a place of belonging. You carry that with you beyond the four years of college. We, at the university, want to remain linked to our alumni base and to foster a community that is reaching out and assisting each other in the good times as well as the tough times.”

Initially, Fry will be fielding requests on a case-by-case basis from students seeking mentoring connections with alumni. He will then find specific alumni who fit the students’ requests in hope that those relationships will grow and benefit the students as well as the alum.

“As each student comes to us with a request, we’ll tailor what we’re looking for to match exactly what that student needs,” Davis says. This is done primarily through the alumni database, which houses valuable information on all of the university’s alumni, including contact information, occupation, graduation year, etc. When a student expresses interest in contacting alumni in a certain field, the Alumni Office searches its database for likely candidates and then contacts those people to see if they are willing to be a mentor. If they agree, then their contact information is provided to the student, who will then make contact and hopefully get the information, advice, or referral they need.

Davis explains, “We’ve had students come to us looking for very specific job leads or looking for a very targeted type of person. They want to know if we can put them in touch with someone who is an accountant in Lexington, Ky., or someone who is in the recording industry in Nashville, or someone who works for a specific company like Dow Chemical or Eli Lilly. And every time we’ve been approached with one of these requests, we have found an alum or multiple alums who have been willing to step up and be a resource to that student.”

Junior Kyle Schroeder is one student who has taken advantage of the new alumni mentor network. A business management major with a focus on entrepreneurship, Schroeder was looking to connect with alumni entrepreneurs who have been where he is now and gone on to find success. “I wanted their opinions about preparation and the skills they obtained while they were at AU,” he says. “Anytime I can reach out and learn from entrepreneurs and other individuals in business, I feel I grow in my understanding.”

Not only does Schroeder value the advice he receives from alumni, but he likes hearing their stories as well. “I like to find out what has worked for them and what hasn’t,” he says. “I have found that most entrepreneurs are willing to tell their stories and talk about what they love doing. I have also found that AU alumni are willing to help me through networking. Meeting with one alum often leads to a list of five additional people I should contact.”

Following Schroeder’s request to connect with entrepreneurs, the Alumni Office gave him the contact information for three alumni, including Trevor Yager BA ’96, founder of TrendyMinds public relations and advertising firm in Indianapolis. Starting his business as a small embroidery and screen-printing shop out of his AU apartment, Yager grew his business into the successful company it is today.

Being able to meet and talk with someone who built his business from the ground up was extremely beneficial for Schroeder. “My meeting with Trevor was excellent,” Schroeder says. “I learned a lot about business in Indianapolis and what has made him successful. I can see the importance of networking and how he relies on the people he knows and has worked with.”

As the alumni mentor network grows, the Alumni Office is hoping to be able to spend more time focusing not only on student-to-alumni connections, but alumni-to-alumni connections as well. This means that alumni looking to connect with other alumni in a certain industry or geographic location could contact the Alumni Office and be put in touch with someone who can help them. Davis explains, “If our alumni base is like the workforce at large, we have eight to nine percent of alumni who are recently unemployed and looking for jobs.” The alumni mentor network could help these alumni as they look for networking and career opportunities.

Although the new alumni mentor network has technically been in operation since last spring, the Alumni Office held an official public launch to students during the chapel convocation on April 9. Addressing the entire student body, the Alumni Office shared what the network is and how it can help students during the remainder of their college years and beyond. Davis also described the network by sharing statistics of the thousands of AU alumni scattered throughout the globe and working in countless professions. “We just want to encourage them to take advantage of this huge opportunity,” he says.

As the Alumni and Career Development offices work together to build an alumni mentor network for students and alumni, it’s becoming clearer what a valuable resource it truly will be. The encouragement and support that students encounter during their four years on campus is exploding into an international network of alumni who remain connected to their alma mater and are willing to reach out to anyone who is a part of the AU community. The possibilities to connect are endless, and as the AU family continues to expand, so does the outpouring of goodwill that exemplifies Anderson University alumni.

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Staying on Track

Each semester, the Career Development Center (CDC) helps hundreds of students define their career goals and put in place a plan that will help make those goals a reality. Statistically, students who receive this career counseling are more likely to have job offers when they graduate than students who don’t. In fact, last spring an impressive 70 percent of the graduates who participated in the INvision AU program had employment in Indiana at the time of graduation, and many more graduates had accepted other jobs outside of Indiana, had job offers, or had second interviews set up thanks to the efforts of the CDC.

Of course, students can get career counseling at any point during their years at AU, and even after graduation. However, the CDC stresses that the earlier a student makes plans, the better. Here is a simple breakdown of the steps the CDC encourages students to take in preparation for entering the job market.

Freshman year:
• Visit the CDC to learn about its services as well as upcoming job fairs and other events.
• Enroll in the Career and Life Planning class if undecided on a major.
• Make an appointment with a career consultant at the CDC to identify a major that fits the student’s interests and career goals.
• Create a résumé.

Sophomore year:
• Review career plan with a consultant at the CDC and discuss how to implement that plan and different ways to strengthen the student’s skills and marketability.
• Attend a Career Document session to learn about resumes, cover letters, references, job applications, and professional portfolios.
• Connect with AU alumni to learn about their occupations.
• Seek an internship.
• Explore graduate school options.
• Update résumé.

Junior year:
• Attend a Career Connections session to learn how to network with AU alumni, connect with potential employers, and polish interviewing skills.
• Attend job fairs and industry networking events.
• Create a networking list.
• Seek another internship.
• Complete graduate school applications if desired.

Senior year:
• Meet with a career consultant to make sure the student is on track for short-term and long-term career goals.
• Polish résumé.
• Connect with network about job opportunities.
• Learn more about the alumni social network.
• Forward résumé to possible employers and sign up for job fairs and on-campus interviews.
• Follow up on graduate school applications, if appropriate.

Alumni:
• Keep résumé updated.
• Continue to develop skills and expand career network.
• Connect with other alumni through www.AndersonAlums.com, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking sites.
• Share your knowledge with current AU students by joining the alumni network.

For more information, contact Ed Fry at (765) 641-3032.