While we have a list of tasks for the year that everyone is busy working on, we'd like to get an idea of everyone's personal goals and objectives. This will help us be more effective as a group by knowing where we are all coming from. Please use this thread to post your goals, hopes, plans, etc.

Here're some of the things I'd like to see us accomplish:

Continue to organize periodic regional get-togethers (à la the IMSA20 events last year)

Find a better way to get news out than the printed IMSAlum/whatever the new IMSA publication will be called

I think an IAA cabinet blog and/or a ping server might help out a lot here, and would be more timely and convenient than a semiannual paper mailing. I'm planning to work on this as soon as the new server is in place.

Make Alumni Weekend more appealing to alumni

Unless they're located around Chicago or have a reunion coming up, there's not much to draw alumni back for Alumni Weekend. Maybe an integration with Homecoming?

Increase our visibility to the IMSA student body

I think participation in the IMSA Carnival is a good start here; what else can we do?

Planning of the class reunions earlier

It seemed like things got pretty chaotic toward Alumni Weekend this year. Perhaps we can provide more guidance, both in terms of what needs to be done and when it should be done by, to reunion coordinators.

More advertisement of intersession teaching opportunities

Intersession is a great opportunity for students and alumni to connect. I think the number of alumni intersessions has remained steady for the past couple of years; what can we do to bring in more?

Increase alumni participation in the IMSA Fund/other development initiatives
Not everyone has the gift of time. There are a number of successful alumni in all fields who can give financially to IMSA. I think it's incredibly important in an era of shrinking government support to turn to people who are already invested in IMSA - and who have been invested in BY IMSA - to assist in this way. Eric mentioned to me at Convocation that it looked iffy for the replacement of the instrumental music instructor after the previous teacher left this position. That bit of news affected me very deeply for personal reasons, but the idea that they may not have been able to offer an instrumental music program at all due to budget cuts reflects in a meaningful way the shortfall that has plagued state institutions in recent years.

Expand volunteer opportunities for alumni
For those who do have the gift of time, we need to provide more chances for people who are not on the Cabinet to take initiative. Some of these are already being broached by IMSA itself, through the change in disciplinary hearing procedures (a difficult volunteer opportunity, but one that is valuable for certain) and also with the IMSA Carnival. Support for College/Career Day, Presentation Day, and Intersession already takes place. What more can we do as a Cabinet to expand these efforts and advertise them more fully to the alumni population at large and move beyond campus-based activities?

Support for regional clubs
This goes along with the previous statement. We need to network with people both in school and out of it. Energizing and supporting regional club activities is paramount to making my first two goals worthwhile and fruitful. If you don't know where people are and what their level of interest and their resources are, how are you going to get things moving?

The biggest things that I want to work on this year are:

Continuing with the IMSA host program. This will require I work closely with IMSA student council members and recent alumns (those still in college). I'll be getting the word out and adding to the master list of interested students. That list will be posted (most likely) in the IMSA CAC office for students.

Another big interest is the Champaign regional club. Most of the other clubs had events last year but Champaign did not. I think that's funny concidering the number of IMSA alumn that attend the U o I. Hopefully I'll be able to coordinate some sort of get together at IMSA South...it might not be on the scale as the other regional group get togethers but it will still be something.

Previously Joanna Messer wrote:

Support for regional clubs
This goes along with the previous statement. We need to network with people both in school and out of it. Energizing and supporting regional club activities is paramount to making my first two goals worthwhile and fruitful. If you don't know where people are and what their level of interest and their resources are, how are you going to get things moving?

I'd expand this: revamp (or even scrap) the concept of "regional club" altogether. Right now, regional clubs in their official incarnation are non-existent (I've never heard of one ever actually putting out a newsletter, which is a requirement, if you check the bylaws...). The slightly broader question seems to me to be: how do we facilitate alumni in-person networking? I'll throw out a couple of thoughts:

• Identify regions that would be likely to have good turnouts for periodic activities, and seek out coordinators for those activities, as was done for IMSA20 last year. Essentially, I'd see this serving the purpose that regional clubs should now, but with a much greater degree of flexibility and less overhead.
• Improve the ability of alumni to find other alumni near them. I believe that a geographic search feature was a request for newer versions of MyIMSA, but God only knows when that will happen. If there is a timeline for this happening, it's something we should stay abreast of and help to promote when it becomes available. If there is not, is it something we can do ourselves?