University Business December 2006 - (Page 67)

Besides meeting old friends and cultivating new contacts through Caltech's alumni group on the business networking website LinkedIn, alumni can get together in person at events such as Alumni College top and a career conference bottom for Ph.D.s and postdoc- toral students. money keeping up with the hottest item. There's always going to be something newer and better coming up. We want to make sure that we are a constant for alumni . Plymouth State's portal is an extension of the one used for the university's undergraduates, providing a seamless experience for students as they graduate and go out into the professional world. The portal, called myPlymouth, is built on the Luminis Platform and Banner adminis- trative system from SunGard Higher Education. Since data from Banner is integrated into the portal, the university is able to keep track of an individual even as his or her status changes from student to alum. The Plymouth State portal also changes with users' enrollment status; alumni see such things as Alumni News and have the ability to print out unofficial transcripts. Graduates receive life- time e-mail accounts through the portal and so far, 25,000 alumni have signed up . Administrators hope to smooth the student- to-alumni transition even further by creating a portal for students in their senior year, to be rolled out in fall 2007. Users will be presented with such senior-spe- you get the best of both worlds. cific content as tips about graduation, careers, and activities. Shaindlin hopes to organize alumni administrators from vari- These strategies do not require deep pockets. Since Plymouth ous colleges to work together with sites such as LinkedIn. Doing State already had an undergraduate portal in place, adding the so, he notes, could help drive the content and format of network- alumni portal and the senior portal to myPlymouth only cost the ing sites while giving higher ed a strengthened presence. university in-house personnel hours for development. Plymouth Communications Central State's Alumni Relations office pushes use of the portal through an online magazine and an e-mail newsletter. After each mention, a 20 Networking websites undoubtedly have their upsides, but they can to 25 percent surge of activity on the portal is common, Long says. also be volatile some people feel the popularity of the sites echoes The benefits of the portal are already clear. It has increased our the first internet boom of the 1990s, when dot-coms became pop- level of volunteers, notes Long. With the alumni portal in place, ular but did not show profits . A higher ed institution's site, on the the number of online gifts has also increased fourfold since the other hand, can be a reliable and consistent source for alumni. university launched online giving in late 2004. The portal helps That tenet underlies a key strategy for Plymouth State, a school Plymouth State capture that crucial turning point between col- of 6,500 students that implemented its alumni web portal in Febru- lege and the working world. This is our way of making sure that ary 2005. You hear how quickly something goes from hot to not, alumni think of themselves as alumni at 21, says Kenneth Kochien, says Joe Long, director of alumni relations. So you really want to director of management information systems and instructional look at capturing those long-term avenues, not necessarily spending universitybusiness.com December 2006 | 67 Alum.indd 67 11/17/06 3:47:12 PM http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business December 2006

Table of Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Future Shock
Admissions
Financial Aid
On the Hill
EDUCAUSE 2006 Highlights
Technology Spending Survey '07
101 Smart Revenue Generators (and Money-Saving Ideas)
Parking: A Lot To Look At
Engaging Alumni Online
One River, Not Two Streams
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business December 2006