Sabancı University has an “Alumni Office” within its Institutional Development Unit to facilitate communication between the university and its alumni, and maintain more effective relations between the parties. We interviewed Şule Yalçın from Institutional Development about the Alumni Office.
Could you tell us about the purpose of the Alumni Office?
The Alumni Office serves to ensure continuous relationships between Sabancı University and its graduates. The Alumni Office keeps up-to-date alumni profile info and informs them about activities and any other news happening at the university. The Alumni Office keeps track of the career paths of our alumni, and provides feedback to the university. It also coordinates relations with SUMED (Sabancı University Alumni Association).
As we have over 2600 graduates, activities towards alumni are gaining more importance.
What type of activities is the Alumni Office involved in?
Until now, we used to update alumni profile information and inform them about institutional announcements and support certain alumni activities organised by SUMED. Now that the number of alumni has become significant, we have begun to provide more in-depth services to the alumni.
In this respect, we had a “Family Day” on November 11th, 2008 for visiting the “Salvador Dali: A Surrealist in Istanbul” exhibition at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum. Our alumni, students and their family joined us for an organisation that reached 350 people. By getting together with our graduates and their parents, we truly felt that we were all a part of a large family. The Dali exhibition added artistic pleasure to the evening. Alumni enjoyed the opportunity to reunite and attend an event with their parents. Photos of this event are available at here. We plan to bring our alumni together again with family events that we will host in the future.
Are your activities limited to Turkey only, or do you organize events for alumni who are working or studying abroad?
As the number of our alumni increased, so did the number of alumni abroad. At first, the majority of alumni abroad were in the USA, but the balance is shifting towards Europe now.
In May of this year, we organised a social gathering at Harvard University, and Güler Sabancı, the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees attended this event. As a first for both alumni and the Alumni Office, this event was very special. 55 alumni from various states attended the event, and shared their experiences with Güler Sabancı and some faculty members from Harvard and Sabancı University. Photos of this event are available at here.
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