Strengthen Your Business Communication Program with an Alumni Advisory Board

Abstract

Faculty, departments, and colleges are being pressured by state legislatures, boards of trustees, and re-accreditation organizations to assess themselves and their product aggressively. Assessment may deal with demographics, such as number of students per class; perceived quality, such as the nurnber of publications by faculty; or by outcomes, such as who hires the graduates and how well the graduates perform. External advisors are helpful in conducting such evaluations. One such group is an alumni advisory board, which can be established and operate with minimal effort and cost, yet can yield many benefits. The Alumni Board of the Information and Decision Systems Department at San Diego State includes recent graduates nominated by faculty, is targeted at about 75 members, and is queried several times a year on issues related to curriculum, new topics of interest to the classroom, and job trends.

Technical Communication Instruction in Engineering Schools

“…In the United States, a gift of US$6 million from Gordon and Mary Cain initiated the Rice University's Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication, one of the most innovative programs in the country. Involving alumni in redesigning the curriculum also brings more attention to the communication practice needs of the profession (Penrose, 2002). For example, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the engineering school's technical communication program benefits from an industry advisory board through which engineering and technical communication professionals contribute their expertise.…”

Using an Alumni Interview to Promote Rhetorical Sophistication

“…In keeping with Penrose's (2002) assertion that alumni "typically bring more loyalty, understanding and willingness to help than nonalumni" (p. 76), I determined that members of the local Alumni Society would be compatible client partners. Given the university's brand, maintained by a popular football team and a vast alumni network, its graduates maintain a deep devotion to the school.…”

“…held an ongoing interest in using client projects to give students practical experience negotiating the contingencies of workplace communication (Blakeslee, 2001;Cooke & Williams, 2004;Kastman Breuch, 2001;Kreth, 2005). Whereas alumni often serve as contacts for internships and job opportunities and have been identified as resources for assessing business communication curricula (Penrose, 2002), alumni professionals are also well suited to working with students as client partners. To that end, this article describes the Alumni Interview Project (AIP), a client project that adds a new dimension to business communicators' collaborations with alumni.…”

The Use of Industry Advisory Boards in Support of Collegiate Aviation Programs

“…Academic centers represented in the literature include entrepreneurship centers (Zahra et al, 2011) and learning centers (Craig et al, 2018). Academic programs represented in the literature include actuarial science (Query, 2018), marketing (Andrus & Martin, 2001;Kress & Wedell, 1993), engineering (Coe, 2008), communication (Benigni et al, 2011;Dorazio, 1996;Soderlund et al, 2017;Penrose, 2002), information systems (Watson, 2012;Mandviwalla et al, 2015), and sport management (Lawrence et al, 2018).…”