coa alumni network? [part 2]
may jensen | April 12th, 2011
To follow up to my first post on the CoA alumni I did some research. As it turns out, there are a FEW tools out there for connecting students with alumni and MANY for helping students look for jobs – but finding them required a bit of digging and using them as an architecture student did not lend the most fruitful of results. [SoA alumni map complements of Teri Nagel]After talking to our communications director Teri Nagel, emailing some people within the alumni network and running a few google searches these are the resources I found for connecting students to alumni- and a score (out of ten) I give them in their potential usefulness to CoA students:
1. Georgia Tech CoA LinkedIn group: is a LinkedIn group for COA alumni. You can join if you have an account. To find it just go to the groups tab and search ’georgia tech alumni’ within the alumni category. As of today there were 137 members(!), but zero jobs. According to Teri, the group is relatively new- so it is likely that is has a lot of room for growth and future potential.
score [8] all members either alumni or current students of the program. Minimal barrier to entry – long term potentiality.
2. Geographic Maps: Teri Nagel shared with me a few maps that plots all of the registered alumni from the CoA- you can look at them below by department. She explained that they currently have emails and locations for about 2,500 of our 7,000 graduates (35%). Unfortunately, these maps just let us know that there are graduates ‘out there’ but doesn’t let us contact them, tells us for whom their working, or if their offices are hiring. Teri is thinking hard about how to best utilize the alumni with which we do currently have contact.
School of Architecture map
School of Building Construction map
School of City and Regional Planning map
School of Industrial Design map
score [5] i think the potential is there – now we just have to figure out how to utilize it.
3. Student Alumni Association: is a network created last fall to help students start becoming alumni. The organization has a link on its website to sign up to be a campus tour guide, hosts sessions where you can learn about Tech’s history, and advertises various ‘leadership’ opportunities. The most attractive attributes of the network is their sponsored student/alumni events, and their mentoring program.
score [5] the organization is attempting to connect alumni to students- but seems to require pretty serious commitment to the ‘institution’ for participation.
4. Job Seeker Center: is a another service provided by the Alumni Association. It helps graduated students (alumni) search for and/or list jobs. When I searched the database for job relating to design I found 2.
score [3] the program was easy to use, but is reserved for graduates and when queried had very few results for students from the CoA.
5. GTAA LinkedIn group: is a LinkedIn group for Tech alumni. The process for joining is the same as above {resource #1}. As of today there were 769 members- 13 that seem to really have a relationship to the material design world of the 65 that show up when you filter them by the search word ‘architecture’. And there were zero job postings.
score [2] only 2% of the members titled themselves such that they relate to the CoA. And there were no job postings.
6. Jacket Community: is an alumni network which exists to help alumni find one another. However, the network is only for graduated students – i.e. alumni. Because I went here for undgraduate too, I was able to check it out. The site is super minimalist- there is a link where you can modify information about yourself and a link where you can search for other people. And that’s it. Actually, there is also an ‘event’ link- but it had zero events.
score [1] easily accessable sites like facebook and linkedin make this is service basically obsolete
Above are the resources I’ve founds so far. The CoA’s alumni association recently met and I am setting up an interview with one of the members to find out more. Check back soon to read the rest of the situation, or comment below if you have additional information.
[ alumni, architecture, COA, network ]
thanks merica,
what about a good ole’ fashioned newsletter in the form of student work/alumni work?
It seems archaic to correspond that way, but if we had everyone’s information, then this publication could serve as a needle that threads alumni + students together.
At harvard, its the Design journal, while at Yale they call it Constructs. Princeton has Pidgen.
Its not about knowing where people are. Who cares?! Its about grouping people who might not ever know how georgia tech has informed their design lives. Do I care that two alumni are in New Haven CT? Not at all. Do I care that one is Jonathan Aprati now working ofr Pickard Chilton, and the other is graduating from Yale in about 16 days? Yes.
More-so, couldn’t this “thing” whatever it is, be a way to find collective identity in this monolith entity. What IS the Georgia Tech College of Architecture? How does it represent itself? What does it want to be?
Could we have a journal?
Could grey_matter(s) be the needle?
wow thanks merica! im really enjoying the maps. now only if i could get the names and emails of these people…
Great observations that are no doubt going to be instrumental to improving our network. Meeting with the COA alumni group today and will discuss your report card, and especially Leeland’s intriguing suggestion above. Please keep the informative feedback coming! Sincere thanks.
leeland- what a great idea. i think they are trying to get a publication out this semester. too bad it probably will only include the architecture department- i think mr. gamble is in charge. it might be worth an email to him chiming in your thoughts from the alumni perspective. it would be especially awesome to show what alumni are doing within this publication.
teri- thanks agin for all the information. good luck with the meeting- let them know we’d love their feedback here- sort of as an open forum.
kelly- maybe we could start the names and emails from here on out. do you think linked in is enough? or should the coa have its own deal?
As a consistent reader of your site, your first post on COA alumni grabbed my attention and now this one has it. Mostly because I’ve always felt that the connection between alumni and the COA could be much stronger. I will say that recently, I feel as if there are some really good things getting out to the alumni – newsletters, open reviews, this blog, well-run events, etc… but there’s still an obvious disconnect on a personal level. For instance, I didn’t even know we had a COA alumni group and it’s something I’d love to be a part of! (I’ll contact Teri.) But it may also be a matter of starting earlier. So while you are getting in touch with these alumni, there might need to be another side where you are teaching the soon-to-graduate students how to be alumni. Then hopefully you don’t have to repeat the process and chase them down later, it just becomes a standard. A standard for the alumni and the students. The goal is to get people hooked & connected emotionally before they walk out those doors.
In addition to your tools, there’s also YAF (Young Architects Forum): http://www.yafatlanta.org/). Even though it isn’t strictly an alumni group and may not do all the things you expect it to do – it does contain many GT (+SPSU & SCAD) alumni. There are no requirements for membership and anyone can attend the meetings & events. Even a small involvement would potentially expand your network. Sure it’s a cliché, but it becomes more true everyday… it’s not what you know but who you know. For instance, Merica, I could have hooked you up with a few of those NYC contacts… if only we had known!
Anyways – keep up the good work and let me know how I can help. At the very least, you can count me in your alumni network!
So, in order to make LinkedIn more useful we’ve made discipline- or industry-specific groups for like-minded alumni to share ideas and contacts. Please visit today, start a discussion, and invite everyone you know. Please note:
- I’ve renamed the “College of Architecture Alumni” Group the “School of Architecture” Group. (Sorry to those who might have to do some group switching, it was the most straightforward way to go). Join the Architecture LinkedIn Group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2518704
- Join the Industrial Design Group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3885374
- Join the Building Construction Group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3885388
- The City and Regional Planning Group is in transition. You can request to join at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2572085, but it may be a few days until it becomes an “open” group.
More soon.
CORRECTION: Here’s the correct link to the School of City and Regional Planning LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3398853
thanks for the update teri!
cassie- thank you for your comments. i agree, maybe i can help teri get everyone to join our linked in group before they head off at the end of this semester. as for nyc contacts .. too bad i hadn’t posted this earlier.. maybe we could meet up before i move up there?
great information. thanks for all the work. thought: the coa school should bring in professional recruiters to demystify the job search and interviewing process- people who can bring real world, current market strategies for job seekers. how can i access part 1?
william- good idea. but is an architecture interview the same as any other interview? i almost feel like we just need to help students start the whole process earlier- and help them get their portpolio on the web and printed nicely. instead of turning in your ‘digital documentation’ at the end of the semester- what if you also had to upload it to your website? and maybe also find 3 offices [and contacts within that office] that might be within a similar vein of your project’s language and thinking…..
to get to the older post about alumni:
http://www.graymatters.gatech.edu/
or
http://www.graymatters.gatech.edu/2011/03/08/coa-alumni-network/
or
http://www.graymatters.gatech.edu/author/admin/
May,
Greetings from the COA Alumni Board and congratulations on the great work you did compiling and rating the list of current list of tools to connect Alumni and students!
The COA Alumni Board is currently structured to be comprised of alumni representatives from each of the schools of the College of Architecture. Our stated purpose is to help connect Alumni to each other and to the College, faculty and students. And, one of the tremendous by-products of our committee is the interaction and friendships created across the disciplines of our college.
Since 1984, our committee has been a standing committee of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association (GTAA). Recently, the GTAA has asked us to consider becoming an Affinity Group. Please visit their website to see all the details and information of these organizations. We’ve been actively working this year with Dean Balfour and Teri Nagel, as well as the GTAA, to understand exactly what that structure would mean to our committee and how this could allow us to better serve the COA.
Our Board would greatly appreciate hearing your- or your readers, thoughts on Affinity Groups as well as ideas about how you would like to see Alumni connect with the students. From other posts I’ve read on Gray Matters, I believe the students could be a great, creative force to help us achieve our purpose. Keep up the great work, we look forward to hearing from you!
Best wishes,
Ray Douglas
President
COA Alumni Board
mr. douglas //
thanks for the info.. the information online about ‘affinity groups’ is pretty vague… do you know what befits exist for such groups- and what are the incentives are for the CoA starting one?
Information about Alumni Association Affinity Groups can be found at
http://gtalumni.org/pages/affinitygroups