(no subject)
I gotta say, my alma mater kind of annoys me.
I think it's because I work for a college, so I watch the behind-the-scenes stuff (and produce a lot of the stuff that ends up going out to alumni as well). The college I work for is very good at attempting to communicate with their alumni. They send out mailings, have events constantly, and just generally try to keep in touch. Almost everything is done in office, so you are actually getting stuff from the people here, not from some outside company the college has hired. They do a lot of researching on alumni, figuring out who is who and who is a potential "giver". As a result, I think they have a very active alumni community and the alumni end up giving a lot of money to the college, and donate their time and other resources as well.
Clark University, on the other hand, (and yes, I will name my alma mater, just not my place of employment in this post) kind of sucks at the alumni relations stuff. Not a surprise. Clark's administration in general kind of sucks. Faculty? Wonderful. Couldn't ask for better. Students? Also for the most part pretty good, there's a lot of very smart people there, who also happen to be very active in their community and the world in general. It's a fairly diverse mix of people there, with a pretty good Jewish population (something kind of important to me, and why I would probably not go to school where I work, because of the more Christian bent of so many things...not so cool with that). A lot of people are involved with activism, and in my classes at least people were pretty liberal and also not afraid to explore new things (ok, including various recreational drugs, but hey, I guess you can't have everything).
However, their administration just sucks eggs. It did while I was in school and it does now that I'm no longer there. While I was in school, they were extremely unhelpful, from student accounts to financial aid (who were at least nice, just kind of incompetent sometimes), to the registrar people. Registering for classes was a hassle for me every single semester. I don't think I had one smooth semester where something didn't go wrong once. It was incredibly stressful, especially because I was pretty much paying for my own books and trying to pay the rent myself (i.e. I paid my own room, board, and books, but my parents for the most part paid for the tuition with the exception of a couple of times I put it on my credit card...the reason I have such poor credit now since I was pretty much unable to afford to pay them off).
And now? As an alum, I really don't get a lot of contact from them. No events, no letters, once in a while I'll get the magazine but that's about it. No emails, either, except for the emails I'm getting from them now. See, they're putting together a book of alums, all schools do it, and I know most of them go through an outside agency to do it (what was really funny was I was getting my sister's emails from her alma mater, because they thought I was her. They also think I'm my mom, I get her emails as well from BC). And Clark is, in fact, going through an outside agency as well. Which is fine, sort of. See, what kind of annoys me about the whole thing is that this is pretty much the only thing that I've gotten from Clark. No emails about events or anything, nothing about fundraising, nothing saying "hey, we'd like you as someone who gave us lots of money for four years to continue to be involved with us!" I'm not even sure if I would end up giving them money, or if I really care about events going on, but I am sure there are a lot of people out there who would care and who would give money. And they should be making a real effort to reach out to these people. Plus on top of that, I'm a pretty good person for them to want to get some statistics out of. Why? Because I found a job that related directly to my major. I'm employed, and I'm doing what I went to school for. And my major was a weird major, too, one that Clark kind of ignored for the most part. But they want my statistic. I could make them look good. It's one of the most important statistics out there. And a lot of Clarkies don't get jobs related to their majors. So, they should be making an effort. But they're not. They have my email or I wouldn't have gotten this other crap from the company. It's not that difficult to send out email announcements. It's not that difficult to send out paper things. I know it costs money but it actually doesn't cost that much. I know how much it costs, I get the quotes at work for this kind of stuff all the time. It can actually be pretty cheap. But no. No effort whatsoever. And maybe this is what it's like at most schools, but I can't say how it's like at most schools, I can only say what it's like at two schools, the one I went to and the one I work at. And the one I work at? Maybe they're the exception to the rule, but they do a damn good job of attempting to stay in touch with their alums and making sure that their alums know what's going on on campus. They care about their alums. Their alums aren't just spaces to fill and money for four years. They're important parts of the entire community. And yes, part of that is that they continue to be money pots, but it's not all of it.
I just hate the way Clark has always treated their students, and I guess their alums. Like we're not important enough for them to really do anything about. Like they can't be bothered to make the effort of a connection, or going a little out of their way for someone. I always got the feeling that the administration really could care less about the people who more or less paid their salaries. That they felt like the whole place would run GREAT if it wasn't for those damn students getting in the way. And that's not right. A college is supposed to be all about the students. That's what it's there for. Unless you're a really big research college, in which case then maybe I can see being a little less student-oriented, but while Clark has been involved in research studies, they're not a research college. They're a liberal arts college. The thing is, the thing that saves them in my mind and why I went there even with the crappy administration, is that the faculty are just excellent, excellent, excellent. I think for my four years there there were maybe three classes where I didn't like the professor. This was especially important in my major. I felt like they really wanted to be there and wanted to teach. That was really important to me. And for the most part the students were smart as well, which was also important to me (the exception to this was my Latin class...wow, I have no idea how some of those people made it as far as college, personally).
So yeah, if anyone reading out there works for Clark, you might want to rethink how you do things, because it's not the greatest, in my opinion.
But I guess that's just my opinion, and I was a "non-traditional" student, so maybe you never cared to make that connection with me. I don't know.
You still piss me off though.
I think it's because I work for a college, so I watch the behind-the-scenes stuff (and produce a lot of the stuff that ends up going out to alumni as well). The college I work for is very good at attempting to communicate with their alumni. They send out mailings, have events constantly, and just generally try to keep in touch. Almost everything is done in office, so you are actually getting stuff from the people here, not from some outside company the college has hired. They do a lot of researching on alumni, figuring out who is who and who is a potential "giver". As a result, I think they have a very active alumni community and the alumni end up giving a lot of money to the college, and donate their time and other resources as well.
Clark University, on the other hand, (and yes, I will name my alma mater, just not my place of employment in this post) kind of sucks at the alumni relations stuff. Not a surprise. Clark's administration in general kind of sucks. Faculty? Wonderful. Couldn't ask for better. Students? Also for the most part pretty good, there's a lot of very smart people there, who also happen to be very active in their community and the world in general. It's a fairly diverse mix of people there, with a pretty good Jewish population (something kind of important to me, and why I would probably not go to school where I work, because of the more Christian bent of so many things...not so cool with that). A lot of people are involved with activism, and in my classes at least people were pretty liberal and also not afraid to explore new things (ok, including various recreational drugs, but hey, I guess you can't have everything).
However, their administration just sucks eggs. It did while I was in school and it does now that I'm no longer there. While I was in school, they were extremely unhelpful, from student accounts to financial aid (who were at least nice, just kind of incompetent sometimes), to the registrar people. Registering for classes was a hassle for me every single semester. I don't think I had one smooth semester where something didn't go wrong once. It was incredibly stressful, especially because I was pretty much paying for my own books and trying to pay the rent myself (i.e. I paid my own room, board, and books, but my parents for the most part paid for the tuition with the exception of a couple of times I put it on my credit card...the reason I have such poor credit now since I was pretty much unable to afford to pay them off).
And now? As an alum, I really don't get a lot of contact from them. No events, no letters, once in a while I'll get the magazine but that's about it. No emails, either, except for the emails I'm getting from them now. See, they're putting together a book of alums, all schools do it, and I know most of them go through an outside agency to do it (what was really funny was I was getting my sister's emails from her alma mater, because they thought I was her. They also think I'm my mom, I get her emails as well from BC). And Clark is, in fact, going through an outside agency as well. Which is fine, sort of. See, what kind of annoys me about the whole thing is that this is pretty much the only thing that I've gotten from Clark. No emails about events or anything, nothing about fundraising, nothing saying "hey, we'd like you as someone who gave us lots of money for four years to continue to be involved with us!" I'm not even sure if I would end up giving them money, or if I really care about events going on, but I am sure there are a lot of people out there who would care and who would give money. And they should be making a real effort to reach out to these people. Plus on top of that, I'm a pretty good person for them to want to get some statistics out of. Why? Because I found a job that related directly to my major. I'm employed, and I'm doing what I went to school for. And my major was a weird major, too, one that Clark kind of ignored for the most part. But they want my statistic. I could make them look good. It's one of the most important statistics out there. And a lot of Clarkies don't get jobs related to their majors. So, they should be making an effort. But they're not. They have my email or I wouldn't have gotten this other crap from the company. It's not that difficult to send out email announcements. It's not that difficult to send out paper things. I know it costs money but it actually doesn't cost that much. I know how much it costs, I get the quotes at work for this kind of stuff all the time. It can actually be pretty cheap. But no. No effort whatsoever. And maybe this is what it's like at most schools, but I can't say how it's like at most schools, I can only say what it's like at two schools, the one I went to and the one I work at. And the one I work at? Maybe they're the exception to the rule, but they do a damn good job of attempting to stay in touch with their alums and making sure that their alums know what's going on on campus. They care about their alums. Their alums aren't just spaces to fill and money for four years. They're important parts of the entire community. And yes, part of that is that they continue to be money pots, but it's not all of it.
I just hate the way Clark has always treated their students, and I guess their alums. Like we're not important enough for them to really do anything about. Like they can't be bothered to make the effort of a connection, or going a little out of their way for someone. I always got the feeling that the administration really could care less about the people who more or less paid their salaries. That they felt like the whole place would run GREAT if it wasn't for those damn students getting in the way. And that's not right. A college is supposed to be all about the students. That's what it's there for. Unless you're a really big research college, in which case then maybe I can see being a little less student-oriented, but while Clark has been involved in research studies, they're not a research college. They're a liberal arts college. The thing is, the thing that saves them in my mind and why I went there even with the crappy administration, is that the faculty are just excellent, excellent, excellent. I think for my four years there there were maybe three classes where I didn't like the professor. This was especially important in my major. I felt like they really wanted to be there and wanted to teach. That was really important to me. And for the most part the students were smart as well, which was also important to me (the exception to this was my Latin class...wow, I have no idea how some of those people made it as far as college, personally).
So yeah, if anyone reading out there works for Clark, you might want to rethink how you do things, because it's not the greatest, in my opinion.
But I guess that's just my opinion, and I was a "non-traditional" student, so maybe you never cared to make that connection with me. I don't know.
You still piss me off though.