Graduates of the College do not often let the College-or the people they meet here-fall from their lives completely. It is not hard to find evidence of this, whether you look at the hundreds of alumni who return each year for Homecoming and reunion or at the single alumnus from the class of 1952 who recently called the alumni office to find out if he could communicate with his classmates through message boards like the ones he sometimes visits on Yahoo!.

In fact, the College is currently testing a similar message board system with the class of 1963, just one more example of how the College is working to keep alumni in touch with the College and each other through traditional means, but also increasingly through the use of technology.

Betsy Cannon Smith, the alumni secretary and executive director of alumni and parent programs at the College, is one of the key players in keeping these connections strong. She says that the College has an obligation to continue to provide a variety of options that allow alumni to connect. "Web and online communications is one of the vehicles, but I don't believe we see ourselves moving completely towards that. I think it is a huge supplement to what we already have, and a necessary one."

Director of Public Affairs Stacey Schmeidel said it has also been her experience that alumni are always looking for ways to remain engaged with the College. "We try to give them the info, the data and the news that helps them stay connected," she said. "I don't think we've stopped doing anything on paper, but there is some info that is communicated better electronically."

Information in online directories, for example, changes frequently and is something that is easier to keep track of electronically. The College's Web site currently supports an online directory, and alumni are also encouraged to sign up for the Amherst Career Network, which was launched this fall.

While the directory is available only to alumni, the Career Network is meant for students who are looking to find alumni willing to give career advice, do informational interviewing, or possibly even provide an internship or job. Cannon Smith said the office of alumni and parent programs is trying to get the word out to alumni to register for both the directory and the Career Network, and has made it a goal to get this year's reunion classes to sign up for the Network.

Amherst has been working with an outside vendor, PCI, for the past five years to offer services like the online directory and lifetime e-mail forwarding, and has started working with Convio, another outside vendor that will help it develop its online services.

According to Raldy Laguilles, director of alumni and parent programs, the College bought e-mail marketing and events modules from Convio. The e-mail marketing module will allow the College to enhance and coordinate the e-mails it sends, and also will eventually give alumni the opportunity to choose what information they receive and how they want to receive it. "Basically it's helping us target what we send out online, for individual alumni and parents too," Laguilles said.

The events module will make it possible for alumni to register online for on-campus events, although alumni will still have the paper registration option as well.

Jen Voter, senior administrative assistant in the office of alumni and parent programs, added that Convio will give the College the ability to survey alumni to get their views on College-related issues.

The online discussion board the class of 1963 has been testing is widely popular with that class, and the College hopes each class will have its own board by the end of the semester. The class of 1963 began using it its last major reunion to make preparations and to get people excited to come back, according to Laguilles. It worked well for that purpose, but the class has continued using it as a forum for a wide variety of topics. "A couple of alumni commented it was almost like being in a classroom," Laguilles said.

Ted Larrabee '63, who has served as class treasurer and secretary of the class of 1963 for their past six reunions, has led the charge on the alumni side to add capabilities to the alumni page. He is looking forward to the possibilities that working with PCI will offer.

One such improvement that is in the works is the addition of database capabilities beyond what the career network offers. "This capability is a way to begin linking up these people, in a way that doesn't involve careers at all," said Larrabee. He pointed out that one member of the class of 1963 has become a leading kidney doctor, while another has become the president of one of the largest kidney foundations in the country. Database capabilities would allow an alumnus with kidney problems to contact one of these people. "That's just one of the many uses we would like to have," said Larrabee.

Larrabee is also excited about the expansion of discussion group capabilities. "We will now have the capability to set up groups by subject rather than class," said Larrabee. One significant advantage of this system is that alumni will be able to get in contact with friends who were not in their graduating class, something that has not been easy to do, since reunions are done by class. Alumni will now be able to start a discussion board on any topic they choose, and any Amherst alumni, student or faculty member will be able to participate. "Amherst is putting the tools in place to allow us to move towards the future," said Larrabee.

Voter said that the office of alumni and parent programs hopes to have list serves that will be restricted by class set up by the end of the fall, with list serves that will be topic-based to come shortly after. The topic-based list serves will be moderated, but the class based ones will not. Laguilles and Voter both said the class of 1963 has done an excellent jjob of maintaining decorum while discussing controversial topics without a moderator.

"We're enabling [the discussions] by providing the tools, but we're not facilitating them," Cannon-Smith added, a statement which could really describe most of the outreach efforts of the alumni and public affairs offices. They send out the newsletters and set up the events and directories, but in the end it is up to the alumni to decide to what extent they will connect with the College. For the alumni office, using technology to target the information they send out will help them save on costs, not so that they can decrease expenditures, but so they can continue to add resources to those areas they see are particularly helpful in keeping alumni engaged with the College and each other.