Alumni Networks

Reunions

In cities all over the country, http://Facebook.com allows for online class reunions every day. For example, residents in Bakersfield, California, use the site to connect with their old classmates through specific Facebook profile pages—for example, the Bakersfield High School Driller Band of 1979 and Deaf Students of Highland High School. High school class reunions begin after students have been graduated for 10 years and continue every 10 years thereafter. In the past, the class elected government would stay in touch and get together to delegate the responsibilities of planning the class reunion. The main challenge of reunion planning is finding and contacting the alumni. More recently, reunion planning has become radically easier. Finding fellow alumni on social networking sites has enabled reunion planning committees to find people who had yet to be reached in previous years.

Employment Networking

Alumni networking sites have also become increasingly popular for career development. Increasingly, alumni associations are providing online help when it comes to choosing a career or finding a new one. The Morehouse University alumni association takes this approach for its current and postgraduate students, putting programs in place to help alumni who are out of work and out of touch with their university. The association is proposing to add online jobs banks for Morehouse alumni alone and possibly provide continuing education classes online that would be taught by their faculty.

Law schools are also suggesting that students who are beginning to search for jobs should utilize their alumni networking capabilities to help them find employment. Most schools will provide students with access to alumni information in their career center, and some even have online alumni networks. Websites such as LinkedIn or [Page 24]http://Martindale.com provide alumni information pertaining to specific jobs and fields that students are interested in.

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