We all want our career, our personal life, our wealth, and our health to improve, to advance. Yet the term advancement in a university setting has a different meaning. The university has internal structures responsible for promoting and enacting the strategic advancement of the institution, including alumni relations, communications, marketing, and development (fundraising). These integrated functions create a comprehensive ecosystem to advance the mission and priorities of the university. Advancement may extend to include the service by an alumni association or a philanthropic foundation.

After graduation, we are usually contacted first by an alumni or advancement office. Alumni relations happen in different ways in different institutions. It can be a sophisticated operation involving a suite of alumni relations staff and a robust database, or it may be a small staff team or alumni association of volunteers managing alumni contact. The common thread for all alumni relations is the desire to build, maintain, and support lifelong connections with us, as alumni. With thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of alumni, keeping in touch with each of us individually is a formidable task. Truthfully, it's an impossibility. With regular email updates, an alumni magazine, and event invitations, this tends to be a one-sided relationship. Our alma mater doing the work to keep us in touch.

Being a passive alumni citizen is comfortable. To advance ourselves, we need to become active. We need to become dynamic, alumni citizens. Sometimes, we position ourselves as the bystander of our lives. We watch things happen to us. We wait for opportunities to come to us. We respond to a university event or webinar invitation. Perhaps it's a reaction after years of our proactive position as a student. Pressure to step up and pass every exam or turn in assignments on time. It's easy now to sit back, diploma framed on the wall, and disengage. It's like watching television. This is a chance to shake out of the trance and explore advancement for ourselves and for the university too.

Alumni Action 6: Creating our alumni services wish list

In the past, connecting with fellow alumni was a cumbersome process. The university was the alumni gatekeeper. We needed to consult an alumni directory or request the university to send a postcard on our behalf to reconnect with a fellow alum.