Alumni can have a surprisingly strong voice in university and college decisions, and they can also help individual departments in various ways. What is your department doing to maintain good relations with its graduated philosophy majors and minors? [Originally posted on March 27th]

This is the fifth installment in the occasional Philosophy Department Survival Strategies series.

Alumni have the ear of administrators in virtue of them being likely donors to their alma mater, as well as being living advertisements for it. They are technically outside of the university or college, so, unlike faculty or staff, their expression of their views about the university may not be as easily discounted as rent-seeking. Yet, like faculty and staff, they often care very much about the school and are motivated to express their views and act in support of them.

So alumni are potentially valuable allies for any department facing budget cuts or threats to its programs.

They are also potentially valuable partners for a department being proactive in developing relationships and initiatives that strengthen it, thus making it less likely to face cuts or threats.

Alumni can make department-specific donations, help develop career-building networks for your students, attend departmental programs, and even be a part of such programs (e.g., a program for students on how philosophy is relevant to various careers outside of academia). And once a relationship is established with an alum, they can be briefed on the potential danger philosophy departments in general are in, preparing them for future advocacy on the department’s behalf, if need be. They can also be encouraged to be forthcoming to the administration in their praise and support of the department—helping to make it unthinkable, should the time come to cut programs, that philosophy would be on the kill list.

Having good relationships with alumni requires keeping track of them. How does your department do that? Do you rely on central university offices to supply this (and if so, do they include those alums for whom philosophy was a second major?—a problem at some schools)? Do you also maintain your own records? Do you have an official “alumni relations officer” among the faculty in your department?

It’s important to keep alumni informed about what’s going on in the department, its events and achievements. How does your department do that? How regularly? How do you involve—or invite your alumni to be involved—with the department? What do you do for them?

And have alumni done for your department?

Sharing information and ideas about this can be very helpful, now and in the long run. Thanks very much.