Issues Of Establishing Systemic Communications With Alumni (On The Materials Of Spbstu)

Abstract

Communities of University Graduates have a special position in the communication system of Universities. These communities connect education, science and society, and they play key communication role for generations, knowledge and practice. Also they demonstrate the competitiveness of the University and affect the brand characteristics. The key aspects of interaction between Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and its graduates were detected as results of research. The features of interaction between graduates and the University, ways of possible communication and key value, identification and practice-oriented interests of respondents in relation to the University were revealed in the opinion poll. The results show us that it is important to find new forms of communication, which include professional connections with university graduates and let alumni to participate in university's everyday life as specialists, as people, who really represent the professional community. Also alumni are interested both in commercial and uncommercial communications with university. As well we may say that the key factor of alumni's interest in alma mater is communication with new generation of student as new generation of specialists. Alumni prefer roles in communication, which let them play expert role, to be employer of graduates or to take care about practice of students Analysis of results became the basis of University contemporary corporate culture creation and established the other forms of interaction in graduate's community, including the Endowment Fund. 748 6.7. The most convenient format of the event was the meeting with alumni and students -73%, in second place, with a significant lag, making decisions on strategic issues -43%, using SPbPU's graduates meetings as a discussion platform -40% ( Figure 4). 6.8.Also it should be noted that the most preferred channel of communication with the university, which prompted graduates to come to the meeting, was the personal invitation of the rector (37%), as well as information from teachers or SPbPU's workers (33%). Only 25% received the invitation from other graduates and 12% found out about the meeting from the university's website. This suggests that graduates rarely visit the site, and personal contacts are the basis of communication with the university for them. But in the age of digital technology -this is not the most effective form in terms of coverage and labor costs. To form a positive attitude to communication with the university, it is necessary to develop modern communication channels, making the interesting content of the website not only for students, but also for graduates.6.9. We can also offer the following additional interaction formats (they are based on the individual answers of the respondents to the open questions of the questionnaire): 1) ensuring contact; 2) public lectures of prominent graduates; 3) the development of the country; 4) discussion of the current state and possibilities of cooperation; 5) problems of the country's develop...

The evaluation of university’s impact on «human resource potential» of alumni

“…Also in the context of the graduates' attitude to the role of education in general and its alma mater in particular in the formation of their abilities and skills, we are also interested in the problem of communication between graduates and the university. Based on previous studies, we believe that graduates, in general, have a positive attitude towards maintaining communication with alma mater, as well as with other graduates, they do not consider the university as a completed stage, some of them are ready to participate in university research and teaching projects [13]. However, this study allows us to look at the problem of building constant, regular communications between the university and graduates more broadly.…”

“…Thus, students of technical universities can be characterized as highly intelligent, active, capable of solving complex professional problems that require strain of thought. If we take this very complementary image of graduates as a basis, it seems important to find out whether graduates, as representatives of the professional community, are interested in the problem of development of human resource potential, and whether they consider current students and young graduates as human capital that can be used for development of their own projects, and the Polytechnic University as a "workers' creator", as we have been told about research from previous years [13]. The problem of the formation of additional competencies, in addition to the basic professional skills for many universities, today seems to be an urgent task [14][15][16][17].…”