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Dear Brothers of the NEC,
I send you greetings from the members of the Alumni Affairs Committee. I also wish to express our gratitude for having been allowed to serve the Fraternity as members of this committee. The committee is working to see that your faith in us is justified.
Shortly after the appointment and ratification of the Alumni Affairs Committee, last summer, a conference call was held with all members in attendance. For the record, the members of the committee are: Robert Bray, Mark Crewson (Chair), Robert Krause, Kevin McNerney, Michael Palmer, Mark Salzman and Scott Sanders. After introductions, the members of the committee discussed several ideas pertaining to alumni affairs. By the end of the call, it was agreed that each member of the committee would have a particular project on which to work and would report back to the committee via e-mail (regular mail for Brother Bray since he does not have access to e-mail). The committee agreed upon the following process for dealing with member projects. First, the committee member writes his proposal and distributes it to the other members of the committee for feedback. After receiving feedback from the committee, the member sends the proposal to the national alumni list serve and to the national general list serve, eliciting criticism from the Brotherhood. Once the member has had time to make adjustments to his proposal, he resubmits it to the committee where it receives final discussion and voting. Approved proposals are then sent to the National Executive Committee for consideration. The next several paragraphs will summarize each project as it currently stands. Please understand that none of these projects is being sent to the NEC for consideration, at this point. The summaries are just to let you know the status of the committee's work. Collegiate Chapter Alumni Advisors Robert Bray is the author of this project. The basic idea behind this project is to give province governors and faculty advisors additional tools to use in advising collegiate chapters. In certain situations, faculty advisors may not have as much time to devote to their chapters as they would like. Additionally, they may feel tired of dealing with too many music organizations. For these situations, chapter alumni advisors who are Brothers from the community, but not faculty of the sheltering institution can be the answer. This tends to be the norm in most other collegiate social fraternities. However, there are many questions to be answered and potential problems to be worked out before the proposal is ready to be sent to the NEC. For instance, how to insure that the special relationship between music schools and collegiate chapters is not put in jeopardy by the appointment of a non-faculty advisor, etc. Brother Bray plans to consult and seek collaboration from the Faculty Advisor Committee. Alumni Mentors (Alumni Big Brothers) Robert Krause is drafting this proposal. The goal here is to involve alumni with the collegiate members of the local chapter. Chapters participating in this program would match interested collegiate members with local alumni who share similar interests. The alumni would serve as mentors to the collegiate members. For instance, music education majors could be paired with secondary school band, choir or orchestra directors. Pre-law students with lawyers, etc. The Brothers involved would decide upon their own activities, but suggested outings would include having the collegiate member over for dinner with the alumni member's family, having the alumni member attend a concert of the collegiate member's performing ensemble, etc. Alumni Associations Kevin McNerney, President of the DFW Alumni Association, is working on this project. Currently, the Fraternity provides little direction to alumni associations. Once a group is chartered, they have no official responsibility to the national fraternity. Also, language in the National Constitution requiring dues payments from alumni associations is being ignored. All of this needs to change. Kevin's project is multi-faceted. 1. Review the procedures for chartering alumni associations and recommend any revisions. 2. Review current expectations for alumni associations' continued recognition by the fraternity, compare with requirements in the National Constitution and recommend any revisions, either to current expectations or to the National Constitution. 3. Using collegiate chapter reports and citations as a guide, create a reporting system for alumni associations which lists members, budgets and activities for the association. 4. Based upon 3., create awards for outstanding alumni association performance. (This could be done in conjunction with the Awards and Ceremonies Committee.) Collegiate Chapters Interaction with Alumni CPR Michael Palmer is writing this proposal. He is struggling with the issue of how a collegiate chapter can better include alumni in their activities. One of the ideas which has been discussed is creating a national campaign which encourages collegiate chapters to designate one meeting per month as an alumni meeting. This meeting would not need to be radically different from a normal meeting except that it be geared to showcasing the chapter to local alumni. Lengthy debates on heated topics could be postponed in favor of going to dinner with the alumni or performing a joint recital, etc. Michael is also considering an idea from the CPR Convocation which favors changing the term "alumni" to "post-collegiate". National Alumni Events Mark Salzman is the author of the proposal. The idea here is to create one to three national events a year which are geared toward alumni. They could be part of existing events, such as conclaves, regionals and national assemblies or they could be stand alone events such as the alumni gatherings of the last triennium. Services to Alumni from Headquarters and National Creation of Alumni Associations Scott Sanders is the man behind these proposals. First, Scott is examining the services currently offered from the HQ to alumni and will make any recommendations for improvement. Second, Scott is looking into the idea of having the national fraternity help to create alumni associations. The idea is that the national fraternity would select one to three cities/regions for the program. This selection would follow national advertisement of the program and a call for alumni to volunteer as contacts. Once the cities/regions and their key alumni are selected, the national fraternity would provide an up-to-date alumni list for the area to the alumni along with training in how to start and maintain an alumni association. The national fraternity would then help with the details of setting up an organizational meeting/dinner and would send a mailing to all the area alumni. Additionally, the national fraternity would send a national dignitary to the event. Finally, the national fraternity would follow-up on the progress of the alumni association interest group and continue to advise them. As you can tell, all of these proposals are in the early stage of development and need work before they are sent to you for consideration. In order to facilitate this work, the committee will meet at Lyrecrest in mid-March for a face-to-face meeting. Before then, we plan to present our ideas to the list serves for feedback from the general Brotherhood. Any suggestions which you may have, at this point, would be appreciated. We will use the March meeting to finalize and vote on proposals to send to you for consideration. Thank you for your time and your attention.
Ever Yours in the Brotherhood, Mark Crewson, Chair
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December
1998