By Bart Gummere, Associate Head of School for College Counseling and Alumni Engagement

The theme of this edition of Inspire is Bridging Perspectives. That is a theme that lends itself to the classroom in many obvious ways. It is not one often thought of in working with people after they graduate. In truth, it ties quite directly to what we desire to do with our alumni. As students, Eastside Prep exists as a two- to eight-year experience. One finishes their senior year, processes through graduation, and moves on to bigger and better things.

It is commonly thought that ties with alumni are maintained by schools largely for financial reasons. This is far from Eastside Prep’s main priority in this relationship. Instead, our program seeks other goals. First and foremost, we’d like to develop and foster an EPS community that thrives for years past graduation. Ideally, while our graduates stay tied to EPS, they will also remain connected with each other not just socially but as professional and emotional supports.

The events we hold for our alumni are geared toward this end. We do things to help them reunite with each other, but also reunite with the school. Keeping them engaged not just with the school they attended, but the school that exists today. In other words, bridging a historic perspective to one that is current.

We hold many traditional alumni events. Pub nights and class reunions, for instance. The pub night must be off-site, but when possible we hold reunions and other events on campus. We want our graduates to return “home” even now that the campus our early classes inhabited is largely gone. When they see the school and current students in action, they recognize a lot from their own experience. The atmosphere amongst students, faculty, and staff members remains comfortable, warm, and friendly.

We also try to provide programs that reinforce our values and mission. Around the winter holidays, we invite college-age alumni back for a gathering just after school. Of course, our delicious food is provided. The main focus, though, is providing an opportunity for our current seniors to connect with young alums as they near making their own college choice. Then in the second half of the event, we create an assembly line making almond butter and jelly sandwiches for the Union Gospel Mission. By the next evening, those sandwiches are out being distributed to those living on the streets. We inspire our alumni to make a better world, too.

Individual alumni are always welcome back on campus. When they visit, they find current students and teachers eager to speak with them and hear about their experiences. Many report thinking they will only visit for a brief time and then spend half a day or more. Of course, few can resist having a meal from our great dining staff…which we provide free to alumni.

As we look forward, our desire is to greatly expand the ways in which our alumni can be engaged with the school. In the last two admission cycles, we’ve included a young alum on our panels for admission preview events. That has been extremely well-received by prospective families and lots of fun for our alums. We’ve had alums hired to coach some of our athletic teams and others come in to speak in classes.

Our current students are enthusiastic about speaking with our alums and using them as a resource. We’ve had a large upsurge of students seeking information from alums currently attending colleges in which they have interest. We hope to facilitate such inquiries even more in the future. We also hold two assembly panels in which our college-age alums come back and speak to our students. In January, alums speak to our students in ninth through eleventh grades to talk about college life in general and help them begin to think about the general college environment that might best fit each of them. Then in May, another alumni panel is presented for soon-to-graduate seniors. They talk about the transition to college life and how best to handle that next step.

Our alumni base is also growing a bit older. The first graduating class is now turning thirty-five. So we’re starting to think about how our alumni in the workforce can be professional resources for our students, for our younger alumni entering the workforce, and for each other, as well. While we connect people on a case-by-case basis, we are soon to launch a network that will be easy to use and spur many more of these connections than we can manage one at a time.

Alumnifire is a thriving online network for members of the school community to connect, interact, and exchange information. It is used with positive feedback at small schools such as ours and huge universities. We’ve been slowly adding community members over the past six months and by the time of this magazine’s publication we’ll have launched it far more broadly. The network is open to parents and guardians (both current and alumni), faculty and staff, alumni from all grades, and current eleventh and twelfth graders. If you’ve not already created an account, we hope you will now. Instructions on how to get started are in the space below.