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.
What other events does the Alumni Office plan for 2009?
The most important event in the 2009 calendar will be the Reunion planned for the first week of July. The event is held for alumni who are on the 5th anniversary of their graduation, and will include activities that will remind them of their days as students, and special surprises. The second day events will be open to all graduates.
Since this will be the first Reunion, we will work in close collaboration with SUMED and many other members of the SU Community.
Could you tell us about the Alumni Portal as well?
Our alumni used to be cut off from the university after graduation, and were only able to follow events by the university’s public internet site and the e-mails sent by our office. The need for fostering communication gave rise to the Alumni Portal idea. We held a meeting with SUMED, where we discussed what we could do to strengthen the ties of our alumni with the school, and continue sharing the pride of being a member of SU Community. This is how the Alumni Portal began.
The Alumni Portal is an electronic platform that aims to bring together alumni, faculty members and students. The Portal is not just an information page. We want members of SU Community as well as faculty and students to visit the site frequently and share their ideas on a fun and informative platform. That is why careful consideration went to the design and content of the portal. We did our best to keep as wide a content as possible, and created a website that is as active, dynamic and participatory as it had been during university years.
All units of the university will be able to post announcements just like the internal correspondences our alumni became used to reading when they were students, and alumni will be able to view these announcements at the “News from the Campus” section.
What can Alumni hope to find at the Alumni Portal?
The Alumni Portal is comprised of headings like Update Profile, Share, Support, News and Career.
Alumni can update their profile in the “My Profile” section to maintain their ties with their friends and Sabancı University. I must emphasize that security and privacy are of crucial importance in the portal. Alumni will be able to adjust their public profile settings to share contact information with their preferred groups only. For instance, alumni or SU employees will only be able to view the information the user has chosen to make public when looking for information about a specific person.
The Support section encourages the alumni to maintain their ties with the university, provide value to the school, and volunteer for doing something for the university. We hope to create an opportunity for feedback in order to benefit from the post-graduation experiences of our student.
Student Counselling, one of the most important aims of SUMED, has been moved to the portal for gaining further ground. This service initiated by SUMED in 2003 enables our alumni to act as guides to current students, and share their learning with them. The more volunteers we have, the more students we can reach! The Alumni Notes section of the portal awaits active participation from all alumni. We hope that our alumni will share important events in their lives here so that everyone is informed of each other, and the joys of life are celebrated together.
I believe that the Alumni Portal will be an important starting point for alumni. SUMED will also be active within the portal to foster better communication ties with alumni and their members.
I tried to summarize the services offered by the portal here, but of course the portal is not limited to these. I invite all alumni to discover their portal!
What role will SUMED play in the portal?
SUMED has been in close cooperation since its inception to promote and support all events and activities. It is a bridge between alumni and university that upholds the principle “to create and develop together.” It will now benefit from the alumni information that will be updated on the Portal, and use the Portal as an important communication channel for its events and membership activities.
To conclude, what would you like to say to the SU Alumni?
It’s important for us all that you keep your profile up to date. I invite all alumni to enjoy being a member of SU Community, and make good use of the portal.
Thank you.
Interview by: Elçin Uygun (elcinuygun@sabanciuniv.edu)
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