Alumni Association Home > Minnesota Magazine > Past Issues > 2006 > July-August 2006	Print View

Every summer, we take time to look back on the year and to count our accomplishments—not to pat ourselves on the back, but to measure whether your alumni association is fulfilling its mission.

This summer, however, a few backs deserve some pats, including many of yours. The alumni association just concluded one of its most memorable years in decades, and I’d like to share with you some of the highlights.

We formed a new partnership with the University of Minnesota Law Alumni Association, adding 4,700 law alumni to our membership ranks. Of our 56,000 members, more than half now have multi-year memberships and 22 percent are life members. I am thrilled to see an increase in this level of commitment.

More alumni now have more ways to connect to the U, as we’ve added four new Alumni Interest Groups: the St. Lawrence–Newman Center Alumni, University of Minnesota Black Alumni Association, Intercollegiate Sport Clubs and Rec Sports Network, and the Minnesota Daily Alumni Association. We also started a new alumni chapter in Guangzhou, one of six chapters on mainland China and 21 outside the United States. And we launched the new online access to the University Libraries, a valuable benefit for alumni anywhere in the world who want to connect to the U.

With our partners, the University of Minnesota Foundation and the Minnesota Medical Foundation, we dedicated the Alumni Wall of Honor, a permanent, public monument on the Gateway Plaza that recognizes the more than 1,000 recipients of the University’s Outstanding Achievement Award.

In May, we brought 4,200 alumni and friends to campus—including 2,000 of them for dinner on Northrop Mall—for our annual celebration to hear recently retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It was our largest annual celebration event ever and it was moving and magical to see that many people, together in one place, feeling so proud of the University of Minnesota.

Spirits were high that evening. The legislature had adjourned the day before, but not without passing a bill to build an on-campus football stadium. The UMAA has been working to bring Gopher football back to campus for years. It was the first organization to donate $1 million to the effort and has worked tirelessly as an advocate at the capitol and around the state, urging legislators to do right by the U.

Advocating for the U has long been one of the alumni association’s most important roles, and this year was no different. We asked friends and alumni to speak up for the U at the legislature, to make gifts to the U, and to show their support by joining the alumni association.

Finally, we completed a new five-year UMAA strategic plan that was informed by feedback and data we collected from alumni and University stakeholders through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Because of what we’ve learned from you, your alumni association is ready to serve you and the University even better. Indeed, our mission for the coming years is to become the most influential organization in advancing the University’s goal to be one of the top three public research universities in the world.