Citizen Alums

As I said in a recent post, I have been attending the American Association of Colleges and Universities conference, which I have found quite stimulating. From a civic engagement perspective, I was especially excited by the last session I attended focused on a new nation-wide program started by Imagining America founder, Julie Ellison, called Citizen Alum. The whole point is to emphasize the fact that the graduates of our institutions of higher education aren't just donors, they are, just as importantly, doers, who are contributing in remarkable ways to helping to make our communities better. Citizen Alum highlights these contributions and urges all colleges and universities to reach out to their alums to hear their stories and to learn from them the many ways that they are helping to advance the civic mission of our democracy. Thousands of our alums are active citizens, giving back to their communities in powerful ways. We have so much to learn from them. You can learn more about the Citizen Alum project by going to this website: http://www.citizenalum.org/. This project is a poignant reminder of the many untapped resources available to all of us in higher education, if only we take the time and the initiative to find out about them. The mentoring possibilities associated with Citizen Alum are just amazing. The more we can learn from our alums the more we can help to create a sustainable, cohesive, and effective community of activists committed to the public good.