Advancement Perspective
Moving Ahead with a New Model
by Don Hasseltine, Vice President for College Advancement
July 1, 2009
My very talented colleague, Bob Massa, leaves Dickinson this month after 10 years as vice president for enrollment and college relations. His tenure will have an impact for decades to come, for his legacy includes a 70-percent growth in applications from 3,400 to more than 5,800 and increasing the percentage of international and minority students from 6 percent in 1999 to more than 20 percent in 2008, while reducing the cost of attracting these students to the college. In sum, he created a student profile that now mirrors those of the most elite private colleges in the country. We applaud his tremendous contributions, and we will miss him.
These achievements have been part of a decade focused on providing the services and resources necessary to significantly change the student profile and grow the applicant pool. The college, having solidified its position, will now shift part of the college-relations staff to a more traditional development and alumni-affairs model. Starting this month, development, alumni relations and parent relations will become the division of college advancement. I have the privilege of heading this new area.
Moving to this new model, I owe Bob and Karen Neely Faryniak ’86—who formerly directed alumni and parent relations and now is associate vice president for enrollment and communications—a debt of gratitude for having energized our alumni and parent programs. In the last eight years, off-campus alumni events have grown from 26 to 150 annually, the number of volunteers has increased by 60 percent, and the connections with alumni have risen dramatically. These advances provide a solid foundation on which to build an even stronger and more robust program.
To that end, I am pleased that Rick Delgiorno has become the director of alumni and parent relations, after having served for the last four years as director of alumni programs, overseeing alumni-club programs. Rick and I have begun a strategic-planning process informed by feedback we gathered from alumni around the country.
Our findings clearly indicate that, as we build a plan, we must keep the following objectives in mind: increasing networking opportunities, aligning more programs with affiliation (e.g., college major, career interests, study-abroad connections), engaging alumni in conversation about the strategic direction of the college, tapping into professional talents and aligning volunteers with work that more clearly supports the mission of the college. While we do some of these things reasonably well, there is much room for growth. Our commitment is to develop a college advancement program that builds connections and alliances between you, our alumni, and the college in a meaningful way.
We move in this direction knowing that your engagement is critical to our success, for Dickinson’s future is inextricably linked to the commitment that all of you—alumni, parents and friends—make to the college. Your involvement has come—and will continue to come—in many different forms, such as:
- volunteering your time and talent to help attract the best and brightest students
- assisting the college in creating useful and interesting alumni programs in your region
- offering your professional expertise and network to alumni and current students
- and participating in fundraising.
The more ambassadors the college attracts, the stronger and higher the aspirations become for Dickinson. Achieving permanent status as a top-tier liberal-arts college requires your involvement not only as a volunteer but through your financial support. We need your yearly monetary commitment to the Annual Fund, for prestige is inextricably linked to alumni participation and endowment size. To continue to move the needle on both of these measures, we need your assistance.
While Bob Massa set a new standard for our student body, we now must raise the bar on alumni engagement and support. The next five years will set the stage for the increased levels of commitment required to operate in the new competitive spheres of influence we have entered. I know we can count on you to push us ahead.