George Mason Is Wherever Our Alumni Are

The solutionÑtake George Mason to them. This fall, President Alan Merten started fulfilling a long-held goal to meet with alumni outside the Washington metropolitan area. In visits to small groups of alumni in three California cities, Dallas, and New York City, Merten shared news about the university's focus, activities, student life, and growth.

"Alumni are important to us," says Merten. "I've frequently said that public universities can be good without the support of their alumni, but they can't be great."

What were these alums, all successful men and women, eager to know about the university? Well, basically, do the good times still roll?

"These alumni have a lot of good will toward the university," says Merten. "People of all ages, all years of graduation, had good experiences, and they want to know that they are still continuing. The ones who graduated in the early years of the university especially saw themselves as pioneers, and the university as very entrepreneurial. They've read that we still have that same spirit, and they just wanted to hear it."

The visits were highly successfulÑthe alumni, who didn't know each other beforehand, want to meet again socially and to get in touch with other alumni in their areas. "What alumni want from us is to continually improve the quality of the university so that the value of their degrees keeps going up," says Merten. "They want us to make the university visible, to help them connect to other alumni, and to keep them informed about George Mason, because George Mason is a part of their life."

"What we need from them is to talk about us and be proud of their degrees, to associate their successes with the education they received at George Mason, to recommend to students that they come to the university, to support us financially, and to get other alums involved in supporting us."

How to build on the enthusiasm generated by these visits? "Every time I travel, I plan to visit alumni, and I encourage key faculty, deans, directors, vice presidents, and others to do the same," says Merten. "Joy Hughes [vice president for information technology], for instance, met with alumni one on one in Seattle and San Jose on a recent business trip. This is something we want to do much more of.

"And when we visit, we'll provide a list of other alumni in the area, so they can connect. When I was at Cornell, it was not unusual for me to introduce two alumni, and the next thing I heard, they had started a business together."

Alumni Affairs has followed up with the alumni in the five cities Merten visited to see if any of them would volunteer to be a regional coordinator so that more local events could be scheduled. Once regional coordinators are identified, Alumni Affairs will notify all the alumni in those areas of the contact persons. Perhaps after relationships have been cultivated, the alumni will want to form regional chapters.