alumni futures

Stanford's iTunes U Partnership

Late in April, Stanford reminded its alumni about the school's iTunes content, telling them, "we've just added lots of new tracks - including faculty lectures, interviews, events, sports and music." The message continued:

Here are just some of the topics you can tune into on Stanford on iTunes U:

    * Is Global Warming Real?
    * The United States and Asia: Risks and Opportunities
    * 21st Century Medical Advances
    * Charter Schools

You'll also find complete University courses and more content being added each week. Looking for a specific topic? All content is now searchable by keyword...

And iTunes U isn't just for Stanford alumni. Anyone can download tracks to a computer or mp3 player (like an iPod) and use iTunes to listen.

Stanford's Director of Alumni Programs, Cindy Pearson, gave her MINARY-L colleagues more info:

Though it's been "live" since October 2005, this is our first big marketing push to alumni. It is a public site, so anyone can access it, and we have been averaging over 15,000 downloads a week.

So far, though, Stanford can't track what fraction of users are alumni.

Meanwhile, Stanford has structured the site to give departments and schools a "home" for their content.  "So far," says Cindy, "the alumni response has been very positive." The partnership is a good example of entrepreneurial spirit combined with a societal trend. Alumni doing something anyway? Figure out a way your organization can participate in a way that makes sense to everyone. Putting academic content into the iTunes pipeline puts Stanford's unique content in the hands of alumni - and the public at large. 

Rewind: Forbes Magazine covered Stanford's iTunes move back in January of 2006.

Click images for larger screenshots of the main Stanford page in iTunes (top) and the Alumni Association's content (bottom).

An Alumni Innovation Institute?

The Los Angeles Times carried a story recently about the University of Southern California's "innovation institute," which is expanding beyond technical and scientific fields.

The Stevens Institute, as it is known, will be

a university-wide, centralized hub for nurturing inventions as well as inventors. Traditionally, schools tend to focus on inventions and ideas connected to science and technology and ignore others, but officials said all disciplines must be included for maximum benefit to the public's quality of life. Innovative ideas could also include nonprofit organizations that aid a community.

Fair enough. Sounds like a slight twist on some combination of tech transfer and community development, or some other aspect of town-gown relations. But this part jumped out at me:

In the spirit of innovation, Provost C.L. Max Nikias also announced he wants to develop in the next year a minor in innovation for all doctoral students, regardless of their discipline. "I want innovation to be the signature for the USC PhD diploma," Nikias said.

Then exposure to concepts surrounding innovation won't just be a hallmark of USC's students and faculty - it will theoretically be a characteristic of its alumni as well. If that's true (and if you believe that aspects of innovation can be taught), then an ambitious alumni association could certainly invent an Alumni Innovation Institute. This would bring together alumni with ideas that require the infrastructure, brainpower and resources available on a university campus.

At the very least, USC and its sure-to-appear copycats should reach out to alumni. Why? Alumni bring many needed attributes to the effort:

• Experience with the transition from idealistic young student to older, wiser and more seasoned alumnus;
• Hands on expertise in moving ideas from the creative stage to the market;
• Intellectual property and start-up knowledge plus leadership and experience in collaborative projects;
• A powerful network of well-placed individuals in the public and private sector outside the campus.

So look around for that sign on a campus near you:

Volunteers needed! Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, and project managers. Alumni welcome, start today!

Click here to check out USC Stevens on the web.

One Day University: Follow Up

[Updated July 6, 2007 with link to Christian Science Monitor article at end of posting.]

Earlier, I wrote about a company called One Day University. Thanks to Google Alerts, the company's founder Steven Schragis popped in to comment on Alumni Futures. Earlier this month, I asked him for more information about the company, its offerings and its future.

Schragis said he was inspired in part by a professor of his own, a memorable history teacher at Tufts University. One Day U, meanwhile, has "taken off quickly" and was in seven US cities when we spoke, drawing 300 to 400 people per event. "We generally sell out," said Schragis (referring to attendance, not philosophy).

There's a nostalgia for college, the concept of college, being on a campus. It doesn't matter what the subjects are. These professors are the most interesting teachers. So we asked, "What if you ran a seminar with no practical value beyond education for its own sake?" But the hook is, you go to ten or twelve schools and find the one or two professors the students say are the most interesting, the best teachers on campus. Nevermind their age, their subject, tenure. Just focus on evaluations.

Schragis told me "it doesn't matter what school they come from," but his company's homepage only mentions "Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, The University of Pennsylvania, Cornell...." Otherwise known as the Ivy League. If it really "doesn't matter" what school the speakers are from, One Day U might want to mention some public universities, for example.

Wherever they are from, Schragis just promises that the speakers "will be interesting and entertaining. I don't care if they get through their slides - it has to be fun."

The program started out at higher end hotel/conference center venues. Now they are on college campuses, with lunch in a dining hall. Schragis envisions expanding to 12 cities in the northeastern US, and California after that.

I asked whether there was a potential conflict if he recruited a top speaker "out from under" an alumni education program on a campus. He is not worried:

I am skeptical that it would cause any problem. A professor will do this program because he wants to, not because it's a better gig than doing it for free for the alumni office. We're talking apples and oranges, because this is a different product from yours, and a different [i.e., multi-school] audience.

"In the end, he says, "we're helping the schools by showing off their professors. And we know we're doing it right, because someone is already copying us."

Schragis has hit on something so simple it should have been obvious a while ago, but those of us dedicated to advancing our single institution are thinking inside a box. One Day U has no such limitation and can continue expanding for quite a while yet. As for being copied, we probably think they're copying us, but to hear Steven Schragis tell it, One Day U doesn't know it.

Click here to see the original posting about One Day University

Christian Science Monitor article about One Day U, June 2007

Alumni Travel Journals Online

The other day Penn State's Roxanne Shiels posted an interesting query to the Minary-L alumni education listserv, which read in part:

I was wondering if anyone had any good examples of day-by-day travel dispatches or blogs for any of your travel programs.  The editor of our alumni magazine is traveling to France and is willing to do this for us but wanted to get some sample formats and content.

There was also the question of privacy, and whether to include travelers' full names:

I always worry that including full names will say "Hey, all you burglars out there, Jane Smith from Florida will be in France for another 8 days. Come and clean her out!"  Yet, if we don't include last names, it loses some of its credibility. Thoughts?

Rob Fure of Washington & Lee University commented that

writing is the workshop of perception and a well-written account of a journey  brings it back vividly and lastingly for travelers and writers alike. I only wish only that more of our colleagues in this field would risk it.

And Nathan Stazewski of Swarthmore contributed this info:

Our Publications director went on our Vietnam trip and did the following blog, http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/vietnam/index.html

So one question is - why aren't more alumni travel directors encouraging or experimenting with this format? Seems like it would add depth and a new dynamic to the trips, while reaching the up-and-coming audience for these very programs...even without mentioning full names and home towns...

One Day U: Competition for Alumni Educators

A new company is picking up a practice which until now was solely the domain of alumni associations: faculty speakers delivering educational talks to alumni.

One Day University has launched a series of multi-speaker events in the eastern US. Steven Schragis, the company's founder, knows a thing or two about adult education: he was National Director of The Learning Annex. And the description of One Day University sounds like it could have come from any alumni association's web site or direct mail piece (although they might want to hire an English Composition prof to eliminate those pesky typos):

Our program allows students-for-a-day to rediscover the joy of education by journeying back into beloved subjects and exploring new ones. Remember those classes you were fascinated by — but never signed up for? Maybe you wish you had taken a psychology class, or political science, or ethics, or even astrophysics. Or remember that class you wanted to take with a renowned professor — but it always filled up to [sic] quickly?

Back in November, One Day U was featured on a blog called Unusual Business Ideas That Work. As of that writing, two One Day U programs were complete and three more were scheduled:

Each one has sold out, and they have grossed close to half a million dollars since September, said Mr. Schragis, who hopes to expand to 12 cities by the end of 2006.

The private sector has every right to move into this line of business, which alumni associations have traditionally claimed for themselves. But several questions leap to mind:

• Is there anything objectionable about One Day U or its potential competitors taking a page out of the universities' books?
• Does the prospect of these programs making a profit raise your hackles?
• Will you have a harder time convincing professors to go on the road as "service to the institution," when they can do the same thing for One Day University and get paid for it?
• Finally, how does the format, content and value of these programs compare to what alumni associations offer?

Follow up posting about One Day University

Educational Tours Featured in AP Story

The Educational Travel Conference is underway in Baltimore, and the Associated Press is carrying a story from there today:

Travelers Flock to Educational Tours

The article quotes a cross-section of industry people, many of whom will be familiar to alumni professionals, and summarizes the rationale for universities and tour companies this way:

For universities, alumni travel programs offer another method of fundraising and a means of tightening bonds with their alumni and encouraging future donations. For travel companies, extra features like lectures from scholars help sign up customers for group travel, especially sophisticated baby boomers and people who have ever more options for booking discounted flights and hotels online.

It's interesting that they don't point out one of the most obvious features of the tours themselves: they are educational programs. Maybe that's implicit in the article, but I think it warrants being highlighted.

Meanwhile, the links beneath the article are limited to two prominent (non-alumni) non-profits, the Travel Conference homepage, and another organization that sponsors volunteerism-focused opportunities. Should there be a clearinghouse on the web for all alumni association travel program web pages?

The Educational Travel Conference 2007

For many years the meeting place for non-profit organizations with educational travel programs (i.e., expert-led tours) has been the Educational Travel Conference, formerly called Non-Profits in Travel. Run by Travel Learning Connections, Inc., the huge meeting brings together the different players in the educational non-profit travel business:

• the planners (like alumni associations);
• the operators (i.e., the tour companies);
• the suppliers (like airlines and cruise ship companies); and
• the destinations (such as tourist boards and visitor centers).

This year's conference is just a few days away: February 20 to 23, 2007. Every year, the attendee list and the presenters' roster reads like a who's who of the business. And although the scale of things can be overwhelming at times, it's the easiest way for an alumni officer involved in planning alumni travel to see the key players in a very short span of time.

Educational Travel Conference Web Site

The conference is the brainchild and long-time labor of love of J. Mara DelliPriscoli and her staff at TLC in Montana. If you can't make it this year, bookmark and explore the web site, and plan ahead to participate next year.