Levi Johnson
Contributing Writer
Last semester, I reached out to the Alumni Office to inquire about accessing the alumni database, and a months-long undertaking began. As a senior beginning my job search, I wanted to contact alumni for career advice and strategies that worked well for them as they made the leap from academia to the workforce. I spoke to a few alums on the recommendation of professors and friends and found their advice to be extremely insightful. However, I still had unanswered questions, and sought out more contacts. In 2019, my major’s department chair sent an email telling us to make use of all our resources in our search for jobs including the alumni database. In addition, my First Year Seminar advisor mentioned that the College keeps a database with contact info on thousands of alumni. I searched the website, but found nothing. So, I turned to the Alumni Office for answers.
A few weeks before classes began last fall, I sent an email to the Alumni Office inquiring about access to the alumni database. I received an automatic reply that they were out of the office and would return the next day. Two days went by with no response, so I sent a second email. Four days later I got a response suggesting that I create an account on Wooster’s Fighting Scots Career Connections (FSCC). FSCC is a tool that allows you to search for and schedule meetings to connect with alumni. I created an account but only found one retired alum in the field I am interested in. Nonetheless, I have great conversations with that alum and two others in related areas.
Next, I emailed Career Planning at A.P.E.X. again inquiring about the alumni database. They also suggested that I create a FSCC account. I replied that I already explored FSCC and asked if there were any alumni working at a short list of firms. In response, Career Planning said they would reach out to the Alumni Office on my behalf to see if they can search the alumni database of 27,000 alums (compared to the 1,000 on FSCC).
During my I.S. meeting the following day, I explained the situation to my advisor, and he emailed the Alumni Office to pressure them into giving me a few names. Three days flew by with no response from the Alumni Office, so I sent them another email in search of alums at a list of firms. Finally, more than two months after my first email, they responded that they searched the database and provided me with several contacts.
Conversations with these alums are all helpful but one recent graduate mentioned encountering resistance similar to what I faced. Discussing his senior year at Wooster, he stated that the Alumni Office was uncooperative and difficult to work with. I told him about the problems I had getting names from the alumni database and he replied that a few years ago, he was told no database existed at all. This conversation proved that my success at getting alumni contacts was an exception rather than the rule.
Currently, the alumni database is not accessible to students and only available to the Alumni Office. Although FSCC features many alumni, it is limited to a fraction of alums who volunteer to be a part of the program. There are 27,000 alumni in the database, but few students are even aware of its existence. I succeeded in getting alumni contacts by being assertive and persistent but other students may not be so fortunate. Less-assertive students may miss opportunities to connect with alumni due to the barriers preventing access.
The alumni database should be made available to all students. There appears to be a disconnect between the Alumni Office and professors and students. Professors are aware of the database and suggest students take advantage of it, but it is inaccessible to students. As a result, students every year are missing out on opportunities to learn from alumni in their field. Thousands of conversations cannot happen because students have no way of contacting a majority of Wooster alumni. Alumni should not be hidden and only available to the Alumni Office for fundraising purposes.
At the moment, more than half of the staff at the Alumni Office work in donations to the college. The Alumni Office is focused on increasing donations above bringing students and alumni together. Students will benefit greatly from greater engagement with alumni, but the current configuration of the Alumni Office is unable to provide this connection. The Alumni Office should refocus its efforts to provide student access to some form of the database. Increasing the staff at the Alumni Office could aid this effort in addition to retasking some existing staff. Too many barriers exist between students and alumni and removing the barriers will benefit both current and future students.
