From Across the Country Alumni Lend Their Time and Talents

Alumni give more to the school than the gifts that come out of their wallets.  Over the past year, in large ways and small, alumni contributed their time, energy, and skills to USN’s success.  You can download a full list of the 2010-2011 alumni volunteers in the column to the right.  Below is an impressive overview of just some of the ways alumni have been involved at USN this year.

Headed by President Liza Beazley Lentz ’73 President, Vice President Ellie McCarley Keiper ’95, and Secretary Patrick Gilbert ‘76, the Alumni Board members met monthly at school monthly to plan and coordinate in and out of town alumni events, select our Distinguished Alumnus, raise funds for the Alumni Annual Fund, and ensure that PDS/USN alumni have a voice in the school, in the classroom, in the hallways, and on the Board of Trustees. You can find out more about the Alumni Board and its members by clicking here. For the almost 200 of you who attended the All Alumni Party at Corsair in April, you have seen firsthand the good work they do.

The Alumni Board as a group coordinated the aforementioned All Alumni Party, but we can’t go without recognizing the individual alumni who hosted us.  Thanks to the generosity of Darek Bell and Andrew Webber, both from the class of 1992, proprietors of Corsair Distillery housed in the cool and historic Marathon Motorworks building, we brought the largest group of PDS/USN alumni together at one time in this venue.   

Through a new initiative, we established a National Alumni Board of Visitors.  These 14 alumni from across the country made their first annual pilgrimage back to USN to see firsthand what’s happening on the Edgehill campus and share their observations and feedback.  This group of alumni will be a strong link between the school and cities across the U.S. with our largest populations of alumni.  Membership in the group ranges from alumni in California to New York to Georgia and many cities in between.  To see the full roster of NABV members click here.

For those alumni who had your Reunion in April 2011, alumni volunteers organized your class parties, gatherings for families and friends, and campus visits or athletic events at our River Campus.  We couldn’t host and manage all the weekend festivities without their help.   

Some of these same alumni and many other class agents, as well as the new Alumni Leadership Committee, volunteered for the Annual Fund by making calls, sending emails, writing letters, and in a few cases posting on Facebook or Twitter to help the school raise money for the record-breaking Annual Fund.  The Alumni Leadership Committee, headed up by Sarah Nadler Wolf ’99, was able to lead the way to the largest number of alumni leadership gifts in the school’s fundraising history.

This is by no means an exhaustive accounting of the ways alumni have connected with USN this year, but these are examples of how the involvement of PDS/USN alumni makes our school a better place.  There are opportunities for each of you, based on your time and talents.  We would love to see your face on campus and find a way for you to be involved in the lives of our students and teachers.

Just raise your hand – or send an email – and we’ll find a place for you.