Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT

Four vectors define the past year for the Alumni Association (AA), our programs and services, and our relationship with MIT and its 100,000 alumni.

The Institute's alumni community was not exempt from the tremendous shock shared by all in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, an event that continues to reverberate a year later. Eight alumni died in these attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. The Association has tried to understand the implications of September 11 on our programs over the course of this year.

While sorting out the long-term impact of September 11 on the Alumni Association and our constituency, we also spent the past year working our way through a top-level organizational change and a series of moves into new office spaces on campus.

These changes, along with events on campus, have necessitated a closer examination of the way we communicate and interact internally within the AA and on campus, and externally with our alumni. During the year we have improved and evolved our communications practices. We are using the web and email in new and more effective ways to connect alumni with the Institute and each other.

The fourth vector defining this year is a growing awareness of the importance of alumni as a resource for MIT. From its earliest days MIT has depended on alumni as financial supporters of the Institute. Over the last century, thousands of alumni volunteers have been involved in the governance of the Institute as well as in running programs that connect alumni with the Institute, and alumni with alumni. Due to changes in technology, MIT can now use alumni volunteers in novel ways in the life of the Institute.

Like all Americans and people around the world, the MIT alumni community was shocked by the tragic events of September 11. On September 21, 2001, just 10 days after the terrorist attacks, we hosted the annual Alumni Leadership Conference (ALC). With reports of "credible evidence" of even more terror attacks being reported in the local and national media, more than 340 alumni volunteers and guests from across the United States and the world persisted and returned to campus September 21 and 22 to celebrate their achievements, reconnect with campus life and refresh their volunteer skills. The fact that all those people chose to return to Cambridge—when travelers everywhere were canceling flights and avoiding large cities—reinforced for me that, in times of stress and uncertainty, people share a profound need to seek out the common bonds that hold us together. During that weekend, in a time of tragedy, the Association provided a link for our alumni leaders to people who shared their educational background and interests, and a commitment to a global community.

In the wake of these events, the ALC, with its notable attendance, was a remarkable outcome that was replicated several times over the course of the last year. Many of our regional events were oversubscribed, as rooms hosting events such as the Young Alumni Seminar in New York City overflowed with alumni looking to connect with each other and the Institute. In June, we enjoyed a five-year high in attendance at Tech Reunions 2002 as almost 2,800 alumni and their guests returned to Cambridge to renew old acquaintances, make new friends and celebrate all things MIT.

The Association and its alumni were saddened by the deaths of eight of our own on September 11: David M. Berray, SM '00, Charles E. Jones, SM '80, Frederick Kuo, SM '70, Daniel M. Lewin, SM '98, Michael B. Packer '80, Donald A. Peterson '57, Thomas F. Theurkauf '79, and John J. Wenckus '77. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks the Association established an Are You OK? electronic bulletin board on our web site. Alumni—especially those who lived and worked in New York City and Washington, DC—visited the site to check in on their fellow alumni who had been listed as missing, to review the updated list of deceased alumni or just to share their reflections in the wake of these tragedies.

This past year was marked by a major organizational change for the Association with the appointment on October 1, 2001, of Elizabeth A. Garvin HM as managing director of the Association. By making Garvin my principal deputy, managing internal operations, my time has been freed to work on building more connections with our alumni and thinking about the future of the Association. As Garvin assumed this new role, many senior staff relationships had to change. The staff and I have devoted a great deal of energy to making these relationships work for MIT and its alumni.

In December, a significant portion of our staff moved into the renovated space in Building W59 that had been occupied by Technology Review. With personnel now scattered across three buildings on campus (10, W59 and W92), we have worked hard to bridge the gaps in communication that such a situation can create. Our staff has done a remarkable job in staying connected, rotating meetings to our three locations and making extra efforts to communicate with their colleagues.

The effects of September 11 and our internal changes, taken together with changes at MIT, have emphasized the importance of our communications, both internal and external. As we evolve the way we talk with and listen to alumni and staff, we are focusing on better use of the electronic resources—email and the web—at our disposal. In the winter of 2000–2001, we hired three communications specialists, creating a Communications Convergence Team to coordinate our efforts and ensure we stay "on message" when we reach out to our alumni. This effort yielded a wonderful variety of new projects in FY2002, including the October 2001 launch of the eAVC (Electronic Alumni Volunteer Connection) newsletter that is sent out to approximately 4,500 alumni volunteers each month; a new and improved Alumni Volunteer Connection news section of Technology Review; the creation, with Resource Development, of the award-winning Giving to MIT web site; and most notably, the launch in May 2002 of the monthly Tech Connection newsletter that is emailed to all 61,000 alumni for whom we have reliable addresses. Other Association communications receiving award recognition this year included openDOOR, our online magazine, and the young alumni campaign solicitation plan.

As we have improved and integrated our email and print communications, more of our alumni have discovered the convenience of signing up for our events and services online. In January 2002, we celebrated the registration of the 40,000th MIT alumnus for the Infinite Connection, the Association's suite of online services for alumni. Email Forwarding For Life now sends more than three million messages each month for a total number of 33,477,784 email messages forwarded in FY2002. Overall participation in the Infinite Connection approaches 50 percent of all MIT alumni.

L. Robert Johnson '63, the president of the Alumni Association this year, using the talents of MIT Video Productions, created a compelling presentation that showed the best and most current MIT research and news. This presentation provided a much-appreciated glimpse of the Institute's vitality to alumni who saw it around the country when Johnson visited their areas. It can now be viewed online by alumni and other visitors to the Association's web site at http://web.mit.edu/alum/.

The financial support from individual alumni that has helped to make this institution strong throughout MIT's history continues to the present. In this most challenging of years in the world economy, the Alumni Fund produced remarkably strong results in financial support from our graduates. Our alumni proved once again that they are a substantial financial resource for the Institute with gifts from 28,626 alumni, 1,900 parents, and 503 matching gift companies combining in an alumni fund of $30.02 million. This exceeded the fiscal year goal of $30 million. These results represent a remarkable outcome in a troubled year, and serve as a testament to the continued investment of MIT alumni in this special place.

Alumni volunteers have always been integral to governance and policy at MIT. Hundreds of alumni served the Institute this year, including the 15 term members of the Corporation nominated by the Association's national selection committee and the six alumni nominees who served on each of the Corporation's 31 visiting committees. More than 5,000 alumni gave their time and commitment to MIT through such important tasks as recruiting students, connecting their fellow alumni with the Institute and fund raising. They are our ambassadors to the world, telling MIT's story and working on the Institute's behalf.

There is also at MIT a long history and tradition of using alumni as resources in the classroom—as project mentors, as instructors in some instances, or as field advisors on theses. Because of the technology available today, it is now possible to reach beyond the handful of former students who have been involved in these ways. Opportunities for engagement with students and faculty can be extended potentially to anyone connected to the Internet. I believe the impact of this potential is going to be startling. The MIT Council on Educational Technology, encouraged by alumnus member Hal Abelson, PhD '73, has established a mechanism by which the dean for undergraduate education and the Alumni Association are encouraging faculty to experiment with this approach.

This year alumni have worked with faculty on projects such as Mission 2005, a subject which engaged alumni with students to solve the problems of undersea exploration; with students in the new Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program instituted by the School of Engineering; through the Association's Externship Program; or by participating in Independent Activities Period seminars. Over the course of the last 18 months, we have a record of nearly 400 alumni who participated in these programs, sharing their life experiences with students in a way that benefits both the alumni and the students.

This report documents Alumni Association activities this past year along the three themes for our work during the year: connect, participate, explore. Last year, in attending our events, in serving the Institute as volunteers and in supporting MIT financially, alumni heeded our call to connect with the Institute, the Alumni Association and each other; to participate in the Alumni Fund, in our events, and in their class and regional clubs; and to explore the opportunities for engagement and lifelong learning we offer through our activities both on campus and off. I continue to be impressed by the depth and breadth of the varied expertise that our alumni body and its leaders bring to the Association and the Institute.

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Connect

We offered our alumni, students, and parents a number of different ways to connect with the Institute and each other over the course of the last year. From Tech Reunions 2002 to Technology Review, from our MIT regional clubs to Family Weekend, this wide variety of programs offers people an opportunity to experience the richness of the Institute's research and learning environment; develops loyalty among alumni through a lifetime of potential connections to the Institute; and offers parents a glimpse of their child's experience as an MIT student.

Tech Reunions 2002 and Technology Day

Each June, Tech Reunions serve as the centerpiece of the Association's relational program, and this year, we celebrated a five-year high in attendance. Total attendance (alumni and their guests) over the weekend of June 6–9 was 2,790, a 10 percent increase in attendance from June 2001. Several reunions marked a five-year high in attendance. The Class of 1997 had 213 members attend Tech Reunions, a 39 percent increase over the five-year average for the fifth reunion; the 20th reunion of the class of 1982 had 252 attendees, a remarkable 51 percent increase over the five-year average attendance of 167 people; and the class of 1967 saw a 36 percent increase in 35th reunion attendance, as 172 people came to celebrate.

Alumni participated in a number of class-specific events on Friday, June 7, including dinners at the New England Aquarium and events at the Gray House, and gathered on Saturday night, June 8 for the popular Great Court Gala. More than 750 alumni and their guests danced under a tent in Killian Court, while others gathered in the Bush Room "piano bar." Saturday's events began with the annual Memorial Service, made more poignant this year with the loss of the eight alumni on September 11, and a reception held to thank reunion committee volunteers.

On Saturday, June 9, the Technology Day symposium When Worlds Collide: Science, Politics and Power in the 21st Century, focused on the impact of science outside the lab. The morning session considered several critical questions: How do scientists and politicians negotiate the complex issues where science and politics collide? What changes can we anticipate in how budding scientists are educated—from grade school through graduate school? At a time when the pace of scientific discovery and its influence on society are increasing, it is more important than ever to stop and take stock of how scientists exert influence as educators, thought leaders and policy makers. A diverse set of three afternoon panels focused on topics related to the overall theme.

Technology Day morning panelists included Ronald G. Prinn, ScD '71, the MIT TEPCO professor of atmospheric chemistry and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Shirley M. Malcom, P '01, director of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Daniel Charles, an author and contributing science correspondent to National Public Radio, and a former Knight science journalism fellow at MIT; and John M. Deutch '61, PhD '66, an Institute professor in chemistry who has served in the past as director of the CIA, deputy director of Defense, and undersecretary of the US Department of Energy. This program has been posted on MIT World, with the exception of Professor Deutch's talk.

Despite a rainy start to the reunion weekend, the weather cleared by Sunday when we hosted the annual Reunion Row and the Tech Challenge Games. Seven teams representing the classes of 1997, 1992, 1982, 1977, 1972, 1962, and 1952 returned to the Charles River to compete in eight-person shells. The class of 1992 took the Reunion Row, an event which was marked by the dedication of a new crew shell in honor of the Alumni Association's own Stuart Schmill '86, the director of the Parents and Students Program for the Association and a former MIT crew coach. At the Tech Challenge Games the class of 1982 triumphed, topping rival classes in such events as the Hexagonal Close Packing competition and the Tuition Riot. The whole weekend ended with a family barbecue in Steinbrenner Stadium.

Innovations to Tech Reunions 2002 included changes to Camp Tech, the program we offer to children of alumni returning for their reunion. This year, the Alumni Association worked in partnership with departments around campus to offer participating children a "drink from the fire hose." Almost every Camp Tech program had an MIT departmental focus, as well as a teaching element, and alumni responded positively to the change of programming with Camp Tech seeing its highest enrollment in years (56 children). The class of 1962 also initiated a new tradition for the 40th reunion: a gray vest with class crest to start building their Tech reunions wardrobe, to complement the red jacket they will receive at their 50th reunion.

Young Alumni and Students

In December 2000, the MIT Alumni Association began an effort to increase financial and programmatic participation among its young alumni population (undergraduate alumni from the last 10 graduating classes). The Association commissioned a comprehensive email and web-based survey of this constituency. This data was supplemented through a series of nationwide focus groups. These findings have shaped the messages, communications, and tone of our programs with students and young alumni.

A relations program for young alumni was revitalized in 2001–2002, with the hiring of Laura L. DePaoli '97, a new Student and Young Alumni Programs staff member, in October 2001. The Young Alumni Seminar Series was launched with events in Washington, DC, New York City, and Boston. The 295 total young alumni who attended these events provided very positive feedback that will help us as we plan more seminars in FY2003.

A key element of our focus on young alumni is more engagement with students—our future young alumni constituents. The year was spent in strategic review, and five student focus groups were at the center of this review. A plan is being put in place for execution in FY2003, the main tenet of which will be finding ways to best form an early and lasting relationship with the students.

Ongoing programs include work with the student living groups and the Association of Independent Living Groups, an alumni group. We assisted several living groups with fund-raising programs, including Theta Xi, Sigma Chi, Chi Phi, and Burton-Conner. We had a record 13 applicants for the D. Reid Weedon Jr. '41 Alumni Relations Award, indicating that awareness of the importance of alumni involvement is growing in the independent living groups. We handled a record 90 requests from student groups for database information, more than double the volume of two years ago. Thirty-four student ambassadors participated in 42 events for a total of 195 Ambassador placements.

To introduce graduating students to the opportunities MIT makes available to alumni, Association staff developed and promoted a web site called You Made It. This site replaced the annual Alumni Activities Expo in Lobby 10. The cost-effective site and marketing efforts were very successful, with 86 percent of graduating seniors signing up for the Infinite Connection and 65 percent of departing graduate students.

Alumni Communications

In the winter of 2000–2001, with the hiring of Eve Downing, Jon Paul Potts, and Andrew Skola, the Association committed itself to forging a more systematic and comprehensive communications plan. These three Association staffers worked together on the Communications Convergence Team to coordinate our communications efforts in support of The Campaign for MIT, the Alumni Fund and all alumni programs and services.

This year the most dramatic example of our ability to respond quickly and use technology effectively in communications was the Are You Okay? web bulletin board launched on September 15, 2001, four days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Alumni were desperate to find out whether classmates living or working in the affected areas were safe, and this bulletin board served as a public forum, not only for alumni to let others know they had survived, but to relate their first-hand experiences of the events. Because the board garnered more than 1,000 messages in a two-week period, the names of those posting were cross-referenced alphabetically and by class year to make it easier to find a particular person. Later, as the identities of the confirmed eight alumni victims were discovered, their names and obituaries were also posted on the Alumni Association web site. The quick actions of the Alumni Association in developing and maintaining the Are You Okay? board helped bring the alumni community together in a time of unprecedented crisis. We also emailed and mailed a message to all of our alumni from MIT President Charles M. Vest HM, addressing the events of September 11 and letting alumni know what was happening at the Institute to help the campus cope with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Technology Review, now an independent MIT enterprise, is the only communication piece that all of our alumni receive monthly. Four pages in Technology Review, the Alumni Volunteer Connection (AVC) pages, are dedicated specifically to recognizing our volunteers and marketing Association programs. Communications vehicles new this year are two email newsletters that are sent out each month to different constituencies, complementing and often augmenting the content in Technology Review.

The eAVC newsletter is emailed to approximately 4,500 alumni volunteers each month, containing hot links to content on the Association web site about volunteering, MIT news, and Association programs and services. This communication also features sections targeted specifically to class and club leaders.

The Tech Connection, an email newsletter that we send out to the 61,000 alumni for whom we have reliable email addresses, contains current news about MIT and reminders of the products and services available from the Alumni Association. The guiding principles for Tech Connection content are timeliness, interest value for alumni and marketing value for the Association. Its primary function is to drive readers to the web, both the Association site and other MIT sites of interest. The first issue sent in May 2002 was mailed by MIT Information Services. Subsequent issues of Tech Connection have been handled by an outsourced provider of precision email marketing services, enabling us to track who is reading the newsletter and what links are attracting the most online traffic.

Through our comprehensive web site at http://web.mit.edu/alum/, we continue to offer our alumni compelling online content, including openDOOR, and What Matters, a guest opinion column written by a different MIT alumnus each month. The columns received more than 14,000 hits last year.

Infinite Connection services have continued to be very popular with alumni: more than 45,700 alumni are currently registered, more than 2,000 have volunteered as online career advisors, and alumni have created more than 226 mailing lists on subjects ranging from entrepreneurship to golf. Alumni are actively looking to connect with one another. They have conducted 128,000 searches in the online directory. We now host 57 class web sites and 42 club web sites. The Infinite Connection advertising campaign won a silver medal in the 2002 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards. The campaign was instrumental in helping us reach our FY2002 goal of 45,000 users. Our very first online service, Email Forwarding for Life, remains popular as we forward 3 million messages monthly for the 50 percent of our alumni who have registered for this service.

In April, the Alumni Association expanded the campus community's participation in the Infinite Connection by offering students access to the system. In April 2002, current MIT students—both graduate and undergraduate—became eligible for accounts that include access to the Online Alumni Directory (OAD) and ICAN. The increased contact between students and alumni is expected to have significant benefits for both communities, and alumni have been encouraged to edit their personal listings in the OAD to include a photo and a message indicating that they welcome student contact.

This year, we completely overhauled our Tech Reunions marketing plan. We increased the amount of email marketing, including targeted emails from the class officers, from Hollie K. Schmidt '87, the Technology Day chair, and from myself. This new approach seemed to work as 65 percent of our registrations came in via the Alumni Association's web site, an increase on the 41 percent for Tech Reunions 2001. We also completely redesigned all of the print collateral and revised our messages so they were targeted more to our specific class constituencies. These efforts contributed to the high attendance numbers at this year's events.

Alumni Career Services

We have continued to augment our career-related services, connecting alumni mentors to young alumni and students, and potential alumni employees with alumni employers. In November 2001, a career services survey was sent to undergraduates with degrees in the last 15 years and graduate-degree holders five years out. The survey, which yielded a 21 percent response rate, reiterated themes uncovered in the Young Alumni survey: current career services are largely unknown or underused by alumni, networking and online services are top priorities for alumni, and alumni are largely unwilling to pay for career services. We continue to evaluate the scope of our career services in light of these findings.

We completed online enhancements of the Institute Career Assistance Network (ICAN) program with the second version launch in late March 2002. With these enhancements, we are now able to track usage data to evaluate the service. During the spring, 40 percent of the current advisors updated their profiles following a series of email messages, postal letters, and phone calls. We have recruited additional career advisors and users, instituted email messages, and developed new marketing materials. Current advisor numbers stand at 2,356, an increase of six percent over FY2001.

The following testimonial from Shelley M. Cazares '98 indicates how the program touched a recent graduate: "I am currently living abroad and searching for a job back in the USA. The long-distance element is making my job search very hard. I've applied to about a hundred positions and have been turned down or ignored. The online mentoring system has been the only positive lead I've had. Furthermore, it has led me directly to job interviews. I don't know where I would be without it."

In addition to ICAN, our online career services include an alum-to-alum job bulletin board, a free service maintained by the Association and monitored daily by our staff that posted more than 800 jobs this year. The Association was a founder of ePronet, an online recruiting service. This service had a challenging year, during which the company was sold to Experience Inc. of Boston and alumni usage declined. In the coming year we hope to increase alumni satisfaction with and usage of this product as we work closely with Experience Inc. on enhancements of content and a potential login synchronization with the Association's Infinite Connection.

Regional Activities

FY2002 was a challenging yet successful year for our 91 alumni clubs. The events of September 11 had a significant impact on individual club success. Some clubs that had launched their fall 2001 programming early in September were sustained through the tragedy, and even found that events in the weeks immediately following were well attended by alumni who wanted to renew bonds with their fellow club members. But those clubs that had started later—after September 11—found their annual membership campaigns and event mailings pushed back even further into the fall and winter as the world struggled to come to terms with the crisis. Membership numbers for this fiscal year are down from previous years, with some major markets such as New York and Southern California exhibiting significant dips in membership. The MIT Club of New York decided not to send out a stand-alone membership appeal in the fall. One had been planned for September, but the club board agreed that it would not be appropriate after September 11, and membership numbers understandably dropped.

Event highlights this year included the 75th anniversary of the MIT Club of South Texas; the MIT Club of Boston Gala honoring Harvard President Lawrence M. Summers ‘75; and the six events featuring President Vest as speaker, held in Singapore, Japan, Switzerland, Great Britain, Puget Sound, and Southwest Florida. Chancellor Phillip L. Clay, PhD '75, met with alumni clubs in Martha's Vineyard, Atlanta, Houston, and Delaware Valley.

Graduate Alumni

As MIT's graduate student population continues to grow, half the alumni body will soon be made up of people whose first degree from MIT is at the graduate level. This trend has been obvious for more than 15 years and the Association has devoted attention to serving and involving these alumni, mostly through department-specific programming that continued this year. This year we initiated two regional activities designed with this constituency in mind. Working with key alumni in three corporations, we hosted events in Silicon Valley at Sun Microsystems, in Boston at Fidelity, and in Cambridge at MIT, the single largest employer of MIT alumni in the Boston area. In Washington, DC, Dean Isaac M. Colbert spoke to 125 attendees at the first regional event specifically for graduate alumni.

The Association organized a series of five graduate student focus groups that brought 50 graduate students together to discuss their views and share their opinions of MIT and the Alumni Association in order to identify areas where the Association can make an impact on graduate students. These focus groups complemented an online survey of graduate alumni to which 2,200 graduate school-only alumni responded. Data from this research have led to consideration of programmatic options to foster more engagement with our graduate school-exclusive alumni.

Parents Association

The Parents Association activities this year included Family Weekend, parents' publications, the Parents Fund, and the Parent Connector Program.

Family Weekend in October 2001 saw a record 577 families, with a total attendance of 1,840 people. The event-packed weekend offered parents the opportunity to attend classes, tour MIT laboratories, attend lectures given by MIT faculty, and listen to performances by many MIT student groups. The weekend's keynote address, The Human Genome and Beyond, was given by Professor Eric S. Lander, founder and director of the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research. The annual Nobel Laureate luncheon on Friday featured Professor Emeritus Robert M. Solow HM, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, who led a discussion on the effects that the events of September 11 may have on the economy.

The Parents Association hosted regional parent events in four cities: New York City with President Vest; Houston with Chancellor Clay; Northern California with Alexander V. d'Arbeloff '49, chairman of the MIT Corporation; and Boston with Robert P. Redwine, the dean for undergraduate education. In all, the regional events touched 142 participants, nearly double the attendance of the prior year. We also increased Association staff involvement with Parents Orientation and Campus Preview Weekend.

Communications with parents were strong this year, resulting in record participation in the Parents Fund. Through our Parent Connector program, 234 families made 165 welcome calls and hosted 10 send-off events. The year began with a new communication piece, a summer mailing to all incoming freshman parents with a cover letter from President Vest and a guidebook to the services of the Parents Association. We also issued three editions of Parents News, up from two in previous years.

Other Alumni Groups and Activities

Fiscal year 2001–2002 saw the firming of the partnership between the Alumni Association and the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation. New initiatives this year included a download of varsity athlete data which generated approximately 3,000 new sport records; the creation of club sport codes in the Advance database that resulted in the addition of more than 1,000 records; and arranging for the director of athletics to speak to various audiences, including the Alumni Fund Board, Parent Volunteers, and the MIT Club of Boston.

The Chinese Alumni of MIT (CAMIT) affinity group, under a new president's leadership, Greer T. Swiston '87, increased activity and communication among its chapters. CAMIT held its annual Chinese New Year Banquet in Washington, DC, working with the local MIT regional club to publicize it. The Arab Alumni Association sponsored the third annual Pan-Arab Conference, this year in Beirut. The Black Alumni of MIT (BAMIT) club spent a great deal of the year focusing their efforts on fundraising. The Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) hosted a number of new events under the leadership of a newly recruited program chairperson, Gwelle Hsu-Boissiere '98, and membership increased. The alumni affinity group Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Alumni of MIT (BGALA) continued to host monthly dinners, its Independent Activities Period event, and the Lavender Graduation and Reunion Reception for lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender graduates and reunion attendees.

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Participate

This year, the Association repeated a study done first in 1989 that demonstrated a strong connection between alumni engagement and annual giving. The study examined the donor behaviors of all alumni volunteers, reunion attendees, and club members. Alumni in each group were more likely to be participants in the Alumni Fund, to be regular persistent donors and to make larger gifts. The strong involvement of MIT alumni as participants in Alumni Association activities and as volunteers for the Institute is certainly one basis for the strength of the MIT Alumni Fund. Furthermore, the Institute benefited from the volunteer work of more than 16,000 alumni over the past five years, all of who have given of their time and energy to support MIT in partnership with the staff, students and faculty.

Volunteer Service

The best of this volunteer partnership is manifest in the person who serves each year as president of the Association. In FY2001 this person was L. Robert Johnson '63. Johnson, whose service as a volunteer for the Association has been recognized with the Bronze Beaver and who was awarded the Dalton Bowl for fundraising service to the Institute, shared his enthusiasm with MIT alumni across the country this year. Working with MIT staff, he produced Staying Close to the Leading Edge, a presentation that showed alumni the best of MIT's current research as well as the outstanding young people who study here. His presentation at a large number of MIT clubs, at the Alumni Leadership Conference, and on the web energized viewers and he invited alumni to join him in getting involved. "Not engaging with MIT," he said, is like "holding a winning ticket in the lottery and not claiming it."

Alumni Leadership Conference

Again this year we celebrated the contributions of time and talent of our 6,585 volunteers during the Alumni Leadership Conference on September 21–22, 2001.

More than 340 alumni volunteers and guests returned to campus for this event, with nearly 90 percent registering via the web. Alumni volunteers of all ages and stages of life—from across the United States and around the world—came back to celebrate their achievements, reconnect with campus life and refresh their volunteer skills. Registration for the conference, which had been at an all-time high and had surpassed our goal, was dampened by the tragic events of September 11. While some consideration was given to postponing the ALC weekend, alumni interest remained strong and the conference went ahead as scheduled.

The morning program featured presentations by Chancellor Clay, President Vest, Dean Redwine, Associate Dean Andrew M. Eisenmann '70, and Richard C. Larson '65, the director of the Center for Advanced Educational Services. Each speaker talked about building for MIT's future, including an overview of campus construction and its programmatic impacts, the Institute in the global age, and building beyond the campus walls by including alumni in the life of the Institute. President Vest commented with pride on the campus and alumni responses to the events of September 11 and thanked all present for their confidence in MIT. The afternoon featured workshops for volunteers and concluded with a reception followed by an optional "dine around" that was very well received. Another highlight of the conference was the student-alumni mixer that brought alumni and student leaders together for informal "get-to-know-you" interviews and presentations, and also made for moments of humorous interaction between volunteers and future alumni.

During the Alumni Leadership Conference luncheon, L. Robert Johnson '63 presented Association awards and commendations for their hard work to 22 individual alumni and six groups. These awards were recommended by the Awards Committee and approved by the Board of Directors at the June 2001 meeting.

Bronze Beaver Awards for distinguished service to MIT, the highest Association recognition honor went to Gregory K. Arenson '70, Leon M. Kaatz '64, and Milton H. Roye Jr. '78.

Harold E. Lobdell '17 Distinguished Service Awards for sustained alumni relations service of special depth went to Michael E. Brose '58; Sivavong Changkarsiri '58; Geoffrey A. Clough, SM '72; Arthur E. Cole '68; Barbara A. Crane '77; Robert V. Ferrara '67; Dora Leong Gallo, MCP '92; Linda E. Morecroft, SM '86; and Koji Sasaki, SM '70.

George B. Morgan '20 Awards for excellence in service to the Educational Council went to Vincent W. James '78; Sandra H. Seale, PhD '83; and Lindsey L. Spratt '77.

Henry B. Kane '24 Awards for exceptional fund-raising service and accomplishment went to Thomas C. Davis '84; Mark Gorenberg '76; Judy C. Lewent, SM '72; Donald E. Shobrys '75; Stanley H. Sydney '52, SM '54; Richard M. Tavan '70; and Chiquita V. White '85.

Presidential Citation Awards, given to alumni volunteer groups for distinguished service, went to the Robert A. Swanson '69 Memorial Scholarship Fund, the Class of 1975 25th Reunion Gift Committee, the Class of 1997 Pi Reunion, the MIT Club of Great Britain 50th Anniversary Celebration, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Day/Harleman Professorship Committees, and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Alumni Day Celebration Planning Committee.

Honorary Membership (presented at the Technology Day luncheon, June 9, 2001) was awarded to Thomas R. Henneberry HM and Bonnie S. Jones HM.

National Selection Committee

The Association has the responsibility for nominating one-third of the term members of the MIT Corporation. These nominees are selected by the National Selection Committee (NSC), chaired this year by Robert A. Muh '59, past president of the Association. The NSC also selects the president of the Association and all term members of the Association Board of Directors. Members of the National Selection Committee, elected by the alumni in a worldwide election each spring, include Robert A. Muh '59, Chair; Lita L. Nelsen '64; Arnold A. Kramer '52; Kenneth S. Brock '48; Edwin H. Baker '56; James H. Koenig '87; Viguen R. Ter-Minassian '64; Frances R. Scovil '78; Arlene F. Taylor '83; Cordelia M. Price '78; Barbara A. Crane '77; and Ronald B. Koo '89.

The NSC has named the following alumni to MIT and Association positions for the year beginning July 2, 2002 for FY2003.

Named to the MIT Corporation for five-year terms were Mark R. Epstein '63, L. Robert Johnson '63, and Jorge E. Rodriguez '60.

James A. Lash '66 was named Association president-select to serve as president FY2003.

Rafael Bras '72 and Sandra W. Morgan, PhD '83 were named as Association vice presidents for two-year terms.

Named as Association district directors for two-year terms were Jonathan M. Goldstein '83, Cynthia Helsel Skier '74, William L. Maini '51, Kenneth Wang '71, Marc J. Chelemer '81, and John D. Chisholm '75.

Annalisa L. Weigel '94 was named Association young alumni representative for a two-year term.

National Boards and Committees

During this year, 80 alumni served as members of Association national boards and committees. These committees have been led by the following volunteers: Gregory E. Moore '73, Alumni Fund Board; Scott P. Marks Jr. '68, Alumni Fund Goals Committee; Karen W. Arenson '70, Awards Committee; Mark Y.D. Wang '87, Committee on Nominations for Corporation Visiting Committees; Matthew K. Haggerty '83, Enterprise Forum Board; Robert M. Muh '59, National Selection Committee; and Hollie K. Schmidt '87, Technology Day Committee.

The Alumni Fund and the Parents Fund

MIT's alumni, parents, graduating seniors, and friends have demonstrated once again that they are invested in the Institute, and its faculty and students. In a year of tremendous economic and political turbulence, 28,626 alumni and graduating seniors, 1,900 parents and friends and 503 matching gift companies combined to raise an Alumni Fund of $30.02 million, exceeding the FY2002 goal of $30 million. Gregory E. Moore ‘73, chair of the Alumni Fund Board, led a cadre of fund volunteers who sent letters, made phone calls, and spoke personally with their fellow alumni to achieve these results. This, the third largest fund in MIT's history, is a remarkable result and bears testimony to the strong commitment by MIT alumni to the Institute.

Included in these results is the Parents Fund that set a participation record of 1,399 parent donors. The Parents Fund, ably led by Thomas and Nicole D. Hynes, P'02, also set records for donors at all gift levels except the $10,000-and-above level. A new Honor with Books gift incentive program for parents was very successful, generating 89 gifts from senior parents. One in four of these gifts were from first-time parent donors.

This was a year when the Alumni Fund concentrated a great deal of effort on participation and fell short of our participation goal by only 99 donors. Undergraduate alumni participation increased by more than 300 donors, reversing a five-year trend. Graduate alumni participation was dampened by the unfortunate timing of the first solicitation letters, mailed just after the events of September 11. The graduate degree-only alumni numbers never recovered from that slow start and total graduate degree-only participation dropped by more than 450 donors.

Online giving is a priority, and with the unveiling of the new Giving to MIT web site, a joint venture of the Association and Resource Development, it is now easier and more convenient than ever for donors. The number of online donors increased by more than 90 percent as 951 donors gave a total of $188,771, compared to just 495 online donors in FY2001.

Phonathons continued to account for more than one-third (10,908) of donors to the Alumni Fund, raising $1.59 million in FY2002. The Tech Caller program, our program of paid MIT student callers, enjoyed a very strong year, securing $809,423 from 5,724 donors. Our departmental phonathon program, held every fall, raised $204,320 from 1,324 donors. The Association's student program recruited 322 volunteer callers for the student and athletic phonathons, raising $187,020 from 1,316 alumni. We outsourced elements of our calling, working with the firm RuffaloCODY, a telemarketing firm specializing in non-profit fundraising. RuffaloCODY raised $106,569 from 1,107 donors.

Results and Measurements
(Note: all dollar amounts reflect the Alumni Fund $100,000 cap)

 
FY02
FY01
FY01/02
FY02
FY01/02
Criteria
Results
Result
Results
Goal
Goal
Total Alumni Fund
$30.02M
$33.06M
($3.04M)
$30M
($1.6M)
Undergraduate
 
 
 
 
 
# Donors to Fund
18,311
17,968
343
17,975
(1,125)
# Donors > $500
3,397
3,507
(110)
3500
0
% Donors > $500
18.6%
19.5%
(.9%)
19.5%
1.2%
# First-time Donors
1,019
743
276
750
(150)
Graduate Degree Only
 
 
 
 
 
# Donors to Fund
10,315
10,758
(443)
10,750
(550)
# Donors > $500
1,274
1,350
(22)
1,300
0
% Donors > $500
12.4%
12.5%
(.1%)
12.1%
0.6%
# First-time Donors
552
730
(178)
750
(150)
Total
 
 
 
 
 
# Donors to Fund
28,626
28,726
(100)
28,725
(1,675)
# Donors > $500
4,671
4,857
(186)
4,800
(0)
% Donors > $500
16.3%
16.9%
(0.6%)
16.7%
0.9%
# First-time Donors
1,571
1,473
98
1,500
(300)
Total Giving > $2,000
 
 
 
 
 
# Donors > $2,000
1,262
1,354
(92)
1,300
(100)
% Donors > $2,000
4.4%
4.7%
(.3%)
4.5%
(0.1%)
Total Giving > $5,000
 
 
 
 
 
# Donors > $5,000
678
726
(48)
675
(75)
% Donors > $5,000
2.4%
2.5%
(0.1%)
2.3%
(.2%)
Parents Fund
 
 
 
 
 
Total $s
$364,862
$358,119
$6,743
$400,000
$0
# Donors
1,399
1,049
350
1,200
0

Reunion Giving

The reunion classes celebrating their quinquennial reunions in June—the 2s and 7s—set a record for cumulative reunion giving. This year's reunion classes generously contributed an amazing $90.62 million to their collective reunion gift campaigns. That $90.62 million total shattered the mark of $76.29 million set just last year by the 2001 reunion campaign. This year's record-breaking effort comes thanks to the hard work of 14 different gift committees and their 155 volunteers, and highly successful fund-raising for The Campaign for MIT. Highlights included record-breaking gifts for the 40th and 60th reunion classes of $41.96 million and $15.48 million, respectively, and $13.24 million from the class of 1952's 50th reunion gift.

Class Year
Reunion Year
Gift Total
Participation
1922
80
$1,944,484
n/a
1927
75
$1,848,323
27%
1932
70
$2,577,656
60%
1937
65
$4,961,243
77%
1942
60
$15,483,705
75%
1947
55
$990,734
47%
1952
50
$13,243,719
63%
1957
45
$452,280
46%
1962
40
$41,961,856
61%
1967
35
$1,187,518
48%
1972
30
$1,972,360
48%
1977
25
$3,678,356
64%
1982
20
$137,820
39%
1987
15
$96,094
35%
1992
10
$57,340
24%
1997
5
$27,490
23%
Total
 
$90,615,978
 

The Young Alumni Campaign

At the start of The Campaign for MIT, the Alumni Fund decided to target undergraduate alumni in the 10 most recently graduated classes in an effort to reverse the trend of decreasing young alumni participation. The 18-member Young Alumni Campaign Committee, chaired by Sang Y. Han II '93 and Annalisa Weigel '94, rode the momentum of a program started in FY2001 to remarkably successful results in FY2002.

Continuing with the theme of Participate, Designate, Make a Difference, the Young Alumni Campaign brought in 861 first-time donors, including members of the class of 2002. Among the young alumni classes a total of 2,398 donors contributed to the Alumni Fund, a 23 percent overall participation rate and a three percent increase over FY2001. These efforts were recognized by the Council for the Advancement of Secondary Education (CASE), which awarded the Young Alumni Campaign a Circle of Excellence award in May. The Senior Gift reported 31 percent participation and raised $38,230 in gifts and pledges from 324 class members. This campaign was again aided by the Fibonacci Challenge, funded this year by L. Robert Johnson '63. Johnson's challenge added $7,110 to the senior gift this year, and will continue to match pledges as they are fulfilled in the coming four years.

Personal Solicitations

Association staff in reunion giving, the graduate alumni program, and the parents program have been working with Resource Development to solicit major gifts prospects for gifts of $50,000 to The Campaign for MIT. The Parents Fund Committee was more effective in its personal solicitations this year as the 18 members (households) on the committee generated three times the number of gifts (89) and five times the amount of money ($32,036) as FY2001. The Parents Fund major gift program was continued with 33 qualification and cultivation visits made to non-alumni parent prospects, with one "still pending" solicitation made. The Graduate Alumni Programs staff traveled to several of our major markets and spent time qualifying prospects there, including a total of 200 graduate degree-only donor prospects this year. These efforts are in addition to the traditional personal solicitation efforts of our reunion gift committees.

Other Fundraising Initiatives

The Black Alumni of MIT (BAMIT) club spent a great deal of the year focusing their efforts on raising funds for the new Wesley Harris Fund, which will support MITE2S scholars. The fund-raising effort took off under BAMIT leadership and the group reached its original goal of $100,000. That goal was then raised to $200,000. Special events were held in Boston and in Chicago to raise awareness of MITE2S and this newly named fund.

MIT has 12,717 international alumni, about 80 percent of them graduate degree-only alumni. Finding vehicles through which these alumni can support the Alumni Fund is an ongoing effort. This year, a mailing for international graduate alumni sent out in April raised $38,795 from 167 donors, building on the strong results of a similar mailing from last year.

The Capital Campaign

The Association continues its close collaboration with Resource Development in support of The Campaign for MIT. By the end of FY2002, 50 percent of all alumni had made gifts to the campaign. The Alumni Fund set a Capital Campaign goal of $230 million in cumulative annual gifts, which could be described as the largest single gift in the campaign. The fund reports that we are on target to achieve that goal with total campaign gifts in the Alumni Fund by year-end standing at $153.4 million.

One obvious result of this continued partnership was the launch in October 2001 of the new, consolidated and vastly improved Giving to MIT web site. This new site provides alumni donors and volunteers, as well as MIT staff, with an information-rich site about making gifts to the Institute. Throughout the site, we have included profiles of Institute donors from every level of the gift pyramid, from young alumni donors to the Alumni Fund to the multi-million dollar donors to The Campaign for MIT. The staff of the Alumni Fund worked closely with Resource Development to support and broadcast, to a wider audience, the fund-raising messages of The Campaign for MIT through a number of initiatives.

Alumni Engagement in MIT Education

Through the MIT Council on Educational Technology (MITCET) and the d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education, administered by the MITCET, several faculty members and student groups worked with the Association and the Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education to engage alumni in the education of current MIT students. This year we recorded the participation of nearly 400 alumni in these activities. Many other alumni were invited by faculty to contribute their experience and expertise as an additional resource in MIT's classrooms. For example, alumni are serving as industry experts in the School of Engineering's new Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program; as internship sponsors in the Freshman Alumni Summer Internship Program, started with Alumni Association help in 1998; as panelists in programs arranged by the Graduate Student Council; and in the Sloan School as alumni mentors.

My sense is that this development, now concluding its second year under the MITCET, has the potential to become a huge innovation for enriching the education of MIT's students and engaging alumni in substantive, meaningful ways on behalf of the Institute. It will continue to get the attention of alumni leaders and our staff as MIT explores its commitment to encouraging these opportunities for alumni engagement. Greg Moore ‘73 has represented the Association as a member of the MITCET for this year.

Services in Support of Volunteers

One can view the Association as an international organization with a large sales force (our 6,585 alumni volunteers) located all around the world. In this context, it is easy to see why a major portion of our resources must be dedicated to training and support of volunteers. One example is the support we provide to hundreds of Alumni Fund volunteers on reunion class gift committees, which this year raised $90.62 million in gifts and pledges from members of this year's reunion classes, an all-time record.

Our service to alumni groups remains extremely strong. We had more visits in the field, and more training in groups and one-on-one. Additional online tools were offered to our alumni volunteers. We are hosting more class and club web sites than ever on the alum server, and 243 alumni-created group email lists are now in use. Our online service of downloadable lists and labels for volunteers caught on to a great degree, and more than 100 lists were downloaded for club leaders via the Infinite Connection.

Face-to-face interaction with our volunteers is an ongoing day-to-day activity of most of the Association staff in the field and on campus. In addition we planned leadership development events at MIT and in the regions as we do each year. This year the Alumni Leadership Conference (ALC), our annual volunteer event, included meetings with club leaders and class committees, workshops for the Educational Council and training on the Infinite Connection. The annual Enterprise Forum Chapter Leadership Conference was held in Cambridge October 6–7, 2001.

At the ALC, the Alumni Travel Program joined the Clubs And Affinity Groups by launching an ad hoc advisory group. This group, made up of previous travelers and faculty speakers for the program, has provided invaluable guidance in its first year. In addition the Alumni Travel Program has recruited past travelers to participate in the new online travel ambassador program.

Online services in support of volunteers continue to grow and improve. Events registration online has increased across the spectrum of Association activities: ALC, 87 percent of registrations; Family Weekend, 71 percent; and Tech Reunions, 65 percent, up from 41 percent last year. For Tech Reunions this year, we implemented a new events-system reporting package provided by our database vendor. We added a toolkit for departments to the other online tools available to our volunteers. Web sites hosted on alumweb for volunteer groups increased in number this year with class sites increasing from 49 to 57, and club sites from 38 to 42. We continue to support email lists for most classes and clubs and many other volunteer alumni groups. This year we added online post-event evaluations to our set of services.

We continue to test and evaluate online elections. The Alumni Association manages the election of the young alumni Corporation representative. In 2001, R. Robert Wickham '93, chairman of the Corporation Screening Committee that selects nominees for this position, worked closely with the Association's Alumni Network Services staff to create an online ballot for the voters. This move from a paper ballot to an online ballot has proved to be very popular with the voters. Voter turnout increased significantly from an average 6.5 percent in recent years to 8.5 percent in 2001 and 10.5 percent in 2002. We offered alumni an online option for voting for the National Selection Committee, which was selected by 11 percent of those voting. The senior class election was held online this year, with 342 voters, a significant increase over the previous year's paper balloting. Several reunion classes continued the experiment with online class elections begun last year. We are evaluating these results to determine if this method for class elections is better than elections held during the reunion events.

During this year a great deal of staff and volunteer time was dedicated to the development of a set of requirements for online support of events, both on-campus and in the field. A request for proposals was issued in spring 2002 to identify a vendor to work with the Association to develop the first phase of these transactional services that we are calling SmarTrans. This project will build a system to offer simple online event registration and dues collection, and will be of value to both the Association and its many volunteer groups. The implementation of this service will provide the Association with better alumni participation data to inform program planning, will give us the capacity to handle real-time online credit card transactions and will improve our contact information on alumni, while at the same time giving alumni groups access to services that will improve their ability to manage MIT events in the field.

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Explore

One of the most valuable services the Association provides for alumni is the opportunity to explore the richness of the research and education community at MIT. The video produced this year by L. Robert Johnson '63 is a good illustration of what the Association can do to help alumni explore MIT. For alumni who don't make it to campus as frequently as he does, Johnson wanted to re-create the excitement he feels about MIT. He assembled a presentation with videos of cutting-edge research, images of new buildings being built around the campus and the sights and sounds of student activities. When he gave the presentation, alumni reaction confirmed his expectations—they responded enthusiastically. Now we have posted this presentation as an online video on the Alumni Association web site.

During the fall, under Johnson's leadership, the Association Board of Directors developed a white paper on what lifetime educational opportunities alumni would like from MIT. The thesis of this paper, sent to Provost Robert Brown and to Richard C. Larson ‘65, the director of the Center for Advanced Educational Services, is that alumni want to be able to explore the broad variety of things that happen on the MIT campus every day. The Association provides a number of services that help alumni explore MIT, including the Alumni Seminars program in which faculty visit clubs around the world; the MIT On The Road program of seminars presented by MIT faculty members in selected areas each year; the Enterprise Forum regional chapter programs and MIT-based satellite broadcasts; the Alumni Travel Program trips, often accompanied by MIT faculty; and a variety of online services offered through our comprehensive Association web site.

Alumni Seminars and MIT On The Road

Bringing MIT alumni and faculty together through the Alumni Seminars and MIT On the Road (MOTR) programs is one of the most successful and popular activities on the list of Association's services. This year, through our Alumni Seminars program, 87 presentations were made worldwide by MIT faculty and administrators, with more than 4,500 alumni and guests in attendance. The popular MOTR program held three seminars this year, attended by 333 alumni and guests. These daylong events, featuring presentations by three to four faculty members, were held in Denver, Northern California and Hartford, CT. We continued to experiment with email and web marketing to increase participation in MOTR, with messages from the Association president, the local club presidents and myself.

Enterprise Forum

The MIT Enterprise Forum headquarters in the Alumni Association produces three satellite broadcasts each year, conducted before a live audience on the MIT campus and transmitted to Forum chapters and MIT clubs around the world. The first satellite broadcast scheduled last year was to have been on September 11, 2001, but it was postponed until April 16, 2002. Cashing Out Successfully: Exit Strategies to Capture Value, was moderated by Mark Borden, the Hale and Dorr Corporate Department Chair, and featured serial entrepreneur James E. Nicholson ‘60. The January 24, 2002, broadcast of New Ventures and Venture Capital: Dealing with the Current Environment, was moderated by Kenneth P. Morse '68 and included alumnus panelist Alan G. Spoon '73, managing general partner at Polaris Ventures. The final panel on Winning in the Marketplace: Successful Entrepreneurs Tell How They Did It, was scheduled as a prelude to Tech Reunions on June 5, 2002, and was moderated by Sloan School professor Glen D. Urban and included Nicholas G. Lazaris '72, president, CEO, and director of Keurig Inc. Programs this year were received in 57 locations, including Mexico and Singapore, with a total global attendance of approximately 3,000 (including 600 MIT alumni).

In addition to the activities of the MIT headquarters office, the Enterprise Forum, founded in 1978, consists of 24 chapters worldwide. These regional chapters sponsored more than 250 events with well over 26,000 attendees. These events were organized through the efforts of approximately 300 volunteer leaders, many of them MIT alumni.

MIT Alumni Travel Program

Alumni and others who travel with the MIT Alumni Travel Program have the opportunity to explore the world with other MIT people and often to travel with MIT faculty experts. Following the tragedy of September 11, the Alumni Travel Program experienced a number of cancellations and a reduction in reservations throughout the first half of the fiscal year. But by early 2002, alumni interest in travel began to bounce back and the year ended with a total of 500 travelers taking 39 trips. Even so, by the end of the year, travel lagged considerably behind the record-breaking year of FY2001.

MIT faculty experts accompanied alumni on 20 percent of the trips and special MIT-exclusive arrangements were developed for eight programs. The special arrangements made by the Alumni Travel Program for MIT travelers to meet local alumni in Salt Lake City, Shanghai, Wellington, New Zealand, Berlin, Edinburgh and New Orleans fostered renewed MIT interest in cities where alumni programs seldom occur. Two mini-reunion trips and a trip for the young alumni target audience will be piloted in FY2003.

The Alumni Travel Program continues to be innovative in its use of the web and email to market the program to an increasing number of alumni. The web site is refreshed frequently with images from recent trips, and the new online travel ambassadors program offers new travelers the opportunity to connect with seasoned travelers. More than 700 alumni are on the Travel Program email list, up 55 percent over last year. More web links pertinent to each trip have been added to the site to answer alumni questions.

Exploring MIT Online

The Alumni Association web site is one of the best tools we offer alumni to explore the intensity of MIT. On our web site, we invite alumni to visit the openDOOR, our award-winning online magazine about MIT. This web site features topics of current interest and links to relevant sites on MIT web pages. Topics this year included:

In addition to openDOOR, the What Matters? series gives individual alumni an opportunity to speak out on topics of particular interest to them. Topics during the year have been as varied as genealogy research, computer games, technology and entertainment, and a reunion diary by a class secretary.

The Association partnered with the Center for Advanced Educational Studies to launch MIT World, an online archive of campus events and presentations, available on demand. Active promotion of these videos on the web site and in our email vehicles increased alumni viewing of these presentations that include Wolfgang Ketterle's presentation of his Nobel Prize research and the 2002 Technology Day program. After the first full year of its operations, the MIT World archive now offers 70 presentations from 18 different MIT sources.

Information on all the activities listed above is available on the Alumni Association web site. Alumni can register for MIT On The Road, learn about upcoming trips through the Alumni Travel Program, and find out about faculty speakers scheduled for club presentations around the world. Our web site directs alumni to the MIT events calendar, MIT publications such as Tech Talk, Spectrum and The Tech, MIT Library Resources for alumni, and Technology Review.

Association staff conducted an exhaustive review of our web site with the assistance of a web usability expert and other staff from the Institute. This review is forming the basis for a redesign of the current Association site with an eye toward making a very complex site more "user friendly."

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Operations

Managing and coping with change has been a significant focus for all the Association staff over the course of the year. A new management structure and the relocation of approximately a third of our staff created major challenges for the organization.

Managing Change

On October 1, 2001, I announced the appointment of Elizabeth A. Garvin HM as managing director of the Association. Garvin continues to hold the position of director of the Alumni Fund as well. This appointment changed the reporting structure for most of the Association senior staff, many of whom are now assigned to report to the managing director rather than to the executive vice president. Monica Ellis '91, director of Class Programs and Amy Schrom, director of Fund Appeals, Marketing and Stewardship, filled two new senior staff positions. By year's end, through the excellent cooperation of each manager, these new relationships have been forged and the organization is functioning at a high level of effectiveness. The appointment of a managing director makes it possible for me to dedicate more of my time to the important work of building relationships and planning for the future.

In the second of two major relocations in as many years, a third of our staff was moved from the heart of campus in Building 10 to West Campus. The result of this move is that our staff is now located in three widely separated campus locations, in roughly the same group size. The move in summer 2000 of our Operations and Support Services and Alumni Network Services units to W92 has had the benefit of putting our technical staff in a common location. The move of the Enterprise Forum and the Alumni Activities and Geographic Programs units to W59 in December 2001 has separated roughly half the staff that works on alumni activities and fundraising from the other half. We have revised meeting schedules, planned informal staff gatherings and established regular office hours in each location for senior staff. The entire Association continues to meet these challenges with a positive attitude.

Supporting Functions

The smooth functioning of a complex organization such as the Alumni Association depends on effective support from staff who work in the areas of personnel, finance, network support, mail services, programming and systems maintenance, space assignments, renovations, telecommunications and information systems management, including data entry.

Office Relocation

As noted above, the Association has continued a major, multi-year relocation effort that included significant renovations and move coordination. These renovations and relocations required planning, designing, network support, computer/server relocation and security preparations, as well as many other minute details. Association staff from the Operations and Support Services unit accomplished these relocations and renovations with only minor interruption to the ongoing business of the Association.

MIT Alumni Register 2002

The first new Alumni Association directory since 1994 was published this year. A major database update was completed in preparation for the new register. This publication includes reports on the history of the Association and of MIT and, for the first time, photographs of the Institute. Demographic data and a complete listing of all alumni is also a feature of the register. While we have a widely used online alumni database, many alumni still want to have a publication for reference. To date 3,000 copies of the register have been sold.

Staff Awards and Recognition

As a part of the Institute's Infinite Mile Award program the Association offers a staff award program that includes annual awards presented to an outstanding staff member and team, the Joseph S. Collins HM Awards. In July 2001 the first recipients of the Collins Awards were announced. Joseph Recchio received the individual award of $1,000, and the team award of $2,000 was given to the Web Content Team whose members include Louis Alexander, Margaret Bruzelius, Melissa Chapman Gresh, Eve Downing, Elizabeth Durant, Susan Maynard, Jonathan Slate, and Nancy Duvergne Smith. Additionally, 61 Appreciation Awards (a $25 gift certificate) were given to staff throughout the course of the year to individuals who went out of their way to do an outstanding job and to be helpful to other staff.

Alumni Records and Reporting

Working with Information Systems, a team from the Operations and Support Services unit successfully implemented a new method for online credit card processing, resulting in improved speed, efficiency and lower costs when processing credit card transactions.

The Data Entry Team recorded nearly 50,000 gifts and pledges this year, including in excess of 8,000 credit card gifts, a new record. This team also processed thousands of updates to the biographical and other demographic information that we maintain on our alumni and friends. To provide the management information required by the Association program managers, the programming staff manages thousands of production reports each month, including hundreds of ad hoc requests.

Personnel

The total headcount for the Alumni Association is 91. During the year, we saw 11 terminations, 14 new hires and five promotions. Gregory Bourne was promoted to technical coordinator, Cynthia Chomka to alumni affairs officer II and, as noted above, Elizabeth A. Garvin HM to managing director, Monica Ellis to director of Class Programs, and Amy Schrom to director of Fund Appeals, Marketing and Stewardship.

William J. Hecht '61
Executive Vice President and CEO

More information about the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT and its activities can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/alum/.

 

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