Alumni Stay Connected

KOI ANUNTA/YH

In the age of the Digital Revolution, many argue that universities and colleges are at the forefront of the movement. Students at colleges across the country have immediate, high-speed access to e-mail, the Internet, and the digital world. While the rest of the nation still logs on with phone modems and pays monthly rates, colleges give students access as part of tuition. However, when students graduate, those @yourcollege.edu addresses disappear. How do graduates maintain the connections with their friends whom they emailed or instant messaged every day?

Many universities, including Yale, now provide services tailored to graduates that want to stay in touch on the Internet. The Association of Yale Alumni (AYA) provides many online services to Yale alums, including a permanent email forwarding address, various newsgroups, and webspace for class webpages.

The "flagship of [AYA's] services," according to , Ricardo Chavira, MA '95, the Assistant Director for Information Technology Services is the Virtual Yale Station (VYS). The VYS service provides an email forwarding address in the form of an alias, firstname.lastname.bk.99@aya.yale.edu. All email sent to aya.yale.edu is forwarded to the actual email account of the alumni to whom it is registered. For example, a Yale graduate whose current email address is johndoe@aol.com can have all email sent to the AYA account forwarded to the AOL account. If an alumnus' address changes, he or she can simply go to AYA's web page and enter in the new forwarding information. Thus, the VYS account is a permanent address that does not change, even when the alumnus moves or changes to a different online service. Approximately 9,000 Yale alumni have accounts on VYS. This population has "quite a mix" of alumni from different years, according to Chavira. A large proportion of the addresses are for graduates from the 80's and 90's, but there are also a number of accounts for alumni from the 30's, 40's, and 50's.

Once an alumnus has received an aya.yale.edu address, he or she can also participate in over 100 "listservs," or email discussion groups. A listserv is basically a list of email addresses; messages posted to the listserv are sent to all the addresses on the list, with the hopes of stimulating an online discussion. According to Chavira, many of the listservs are for specific classes, though there are also groups for Yale Clubs, and even one for alumni who have been on, or led, Freshmen Outdoor Orientation trips. Topics discussed range from child-rearing (a discussion held by the class of '75 group), to the turnover of Hong Kong to China in 1995. Yale grads living in Hong Kong and professors of East Asian politics participated in the discussions as well. The listservs have also served to bolster attendance at reunions. Alumni who were in charge of planning reunions sent out notices, arranged carpools, and advertised the reunions though AYA's email services. "Attendance at reunions when the organizers advertised on the listserv," Chavira said.

In addition to its email services, AYA also provides webspace on its server for any Yale alumni class or Yale Club. Currently, there are 16 classes, and 19 Yale Clubs that have webpages on AYA's web server. The webpages also provide a place where reunion organizers can post information and publicize upcoming alumni events. According to Chavira, there are some Yale Clubs that have stopped sending out regular mailings and rely exclusively on webpage and email announcements to keep in touch.

AYA also hopes to broaden its services by providing continuing education progrmas and long-distance learning over the Internet. Like the discussion group on Hong Kong, these services would include discussions with professors, and would use new digital technology to offer multimedia to augment any sort of distance learning.

Through its services, AYA makes it easier for alumni to keep in touch with old friends. The use of online coordination, discussion groups, and online announcements also helps alumni to stay in touch with Mother Yale herself. According to Chavira, making it easy for alumni to stay in touch is the main purpose for the services.

"Yale is always good in fostering connections. The [online] services increase the ease in maintaining these connections," Chavira said.

If the online services strengthen their bond to their alma mater, does that mean that alumni who use the online services might be more willing to give to Yale, financially or otherwise? According to AYA Executive Director Jeff Brenzel,'75, AYA does not actively investigate if alumni who use the online services are more committed to contributing to Yale. However, Brenzel is sure that if alumni like the services provided, they will also become more involved in Yale.

"We have not measured how those seeking to make a Yale connection online differ in terms of their involvement or their willingness to give," said Brenzel. "We are trying to develop online services from the point of view of what alumni seem interested in doing, and not so much from the point of view of how it might change their interest in or commitment to Yale. If we do the first job well, then we are confident that the second will follow."

AYA website

Yale Club of New York

Yale Class Websites

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