Yay of the day!

Temple at some point in the past year or so has restored its online archives for the Temple Times, of which I was associate editor between 2000 and 2004. I’m so happy about this, because it means I can restore that portion of my online clip file.

I discovered this when I had this random notion to Google an amazing student I interviewed back in the early days of my writing career. I wasn’t surprised to find that she indeed went on to Harvard Law School, and I believe we’ll be seeing more of her in years to come. I hit her up on LinkedIn, and hope she writes back, because I’d love to hear what track she’s on now that she’s out of school.

I should note that there was a story I wrote in 2001 that has been tickling around the back of my mind as being an influence on my faith journey, but I didn’t have a copy of it — I found it here. I was pretty much a nontheistic, nonpracticing Buddhist at the time.

My other association hat: Education

I serve on the alumni advisory council of the community college of which I am an alum. I also frequent a number of listservs administered by the Council for Advance and Support of Education, which is an association of advancement and communications professionals in higher ed, including those running alumni associations.

One of the tracks offered in the degree program at George Mason I’m applying to is in community college administration. I don’t think I’m going to go that route, but rather the one on nonprofit and association management. Still, I have a keen interest in community college and the bridges it builds for students who are financially strapped or academic late bloomers (I was both). Now, my CC is trying to figure out how to build a community of alumni, a daunting task.

I’ve volunteered to start building the social media side of things. This means that I’m now doing this for work, school and church. (Ha!)

But anyway. Facebook doesn’t seem to have networks for community colleges, at least not the virginia ones I’ve looked up. And I’m wondering why not? And there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to propose it as a Network. (I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as they didn’t even answer me when I wrote about the fact that my work organization’s name had been coopted as a Facebook group by three young Booz Allen Hamilton employees who didn’t really seem to care about the organization. It’s like a new variation on FIRST!)

For that matter presenting it as a networking might be very difficult, seeing as the community college doesn’t offer email addresses to alumni. But even if we could get the students started in a network, that might go a long way toward including community colleges as part of the education experience. I think this is going to become more and more important as the money crunch gets tighter for kids whose parents were banking on home equity as a college financing option. (Bear in mind, I live just outside of one of those bizarre equity markets, and even my own real estate value is pretty inflated.)

But anyway; it’s official. I’m looking into it, so I’ll be expanding my social networking sphere to include those working in advancement and alumni relations.

ETA: I’ve found that Facebook does have the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) listed under its networks, very unhelpfully under its acronym rather than its full name, which is why I could not find it. That isn’t going to stop me from petitioning Facebook to grant individual community colleges the ability to have their own networks. Part two is figuring out how to grant alumni access to community college networks. The reason I can do this for my four-year schools is that I have permanent alumni email addresses for them. Can community colleges do the same, if the ROI is better alumni engagement–and we know what that translates to!