Alumni association position came open and you were an ideal candidate. I
mean, you had seen hundreds of students come into issue, hundreds of
graduates going to issue and there had to be a lot of uh satisfaction that
highlights in that position. And might you cover some of those? Yeah, it
was, I mean, again, that was a labor of love for mammoth, you know, three
time sun double and most of my careers was at a U. So, uh yeah, trying to
get um alumni really feeling more attached to the university was very
important uh for me at a su during the seventies, uh it was a time of huge
growth and a lot of commuter students and there was really not a strong
affinity to the, to the university. A lot of the my contemporaries felt as
though we worked really hard and uh uh we were working, we went to school
et cetera. So trying to really find ways to attach the alumni back day
issue. And for me, it was really focused on um letting them know that
really incredible upward trajectory that the university was still taking
and that really their degrees, the value of their degree was increasing
every time we made a uh a gain in our academic and, and overall reputation.
So it was really fun to try and strategize around that. Uh the messaging
that we gave to our alumni either through the magazine, through any kind
of communication. Uh and the fun part and just a fun part for me was just
, you know, getting to know alumni. And I just read a, a retirement letter
from a colleague of former colleague of mine. And he said when he took his
job, his goal was to shake the hand of every alumnus. And while I never
could have done that, it still was really rewarding to me to, to, to meet
and get to know as many as I could. And I still keep in touch with a
really large number.