The Future at the Speed of Bytes
If the way you communicate
with your friends, family and others has
changed because of technology,
is it any wonder that it has also changed
the way alumnae/i stay connected?
By Michael Graca
Topic: San Francisco/Bay Area (1 of 1), Read 11
Conf: NETWORK ON THE WEB
From: Lena Moman lenamoman@wheatoncollege.net
Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 03:43 AM
Hello, I am looking to connect with alums in the Bay Area. I just moved to Oakland from the East Coast. Young alums, older alums, really just looking to meet people in the area. Post a message or e-mail me at lenamoman@mail.wheatoncollege.net. Thanks!
What did we do before the Internet?
It's hard to give that question the right inflection on the printed page. Add in a pair of arched eyebrows and a slight, sly smile, particularly if you're of a certain age. Imagine this rejoinder, "Remember Neil Armstrong? He took his giant steps way before the Web, and we all tuned in on grainy black-and-white televisions to take that leap with him. We got along just fine before the high-tech revolution."
But to be honest, there's also a note of wonder in the question--particularly if you're of a certain age--because technology makes it possible to do some pretty incredible things that once were either difficult, expensive or impossible. Like immediately sharing your vacation snapshots with friends who live three states away. Purchasing books or just about anything else at 9 p.m. on Sunday. Building your family tree by searching records stored on another continent, without leaving home. Watching the astronauts in the international space station, night and day (or "Big Brother 2," 24/7, and a whole host of other, less savory options).
You don't have to be a Luddite to argue that the Internet hasn't changed what's most important in life: caring for others and being cared for by them; pursuing satisfying and rewarding work; enjoying ample free time, etc. Still, even those folks who remain firmly attached to Royal typewriters and rotary phones have to admit that the Information Age has changed an awful lot, very quickly. If the way you communicate with your parents, your children and your banker has changed because of the Web, e-mail and cell phones, is it any wonder that it has also changed the way alumnae/i stay connected to each other and to Wheaton? And the change happened fast: most of us heard the term "wired" just nanoseconds before we became wired.
Consider Class Notes in the Wheaton Quarterly magazine, where alumnae/i share the latest news about their life milestones. Five years ago, only six of the volunteers who gather and write up these columns published their e-mail addresses in the magazine. Today, most Class Notes secretaries couldn't imagine completing their columns without e-mail, and many say they wouldn't want to do it.
"I would not have taken the position of class secretary without the electronic options of e-mail," Barbara Horlbeck '75 wrote in response to a list of questions sent to her by--of course--e-mail. In fact, she admits that she and her Wheaton friends stay in touch via the Internet outside of any duties she has as the class secretary. "My life is far too busy and e-mail is the only way to manage a large group of names with a personalized tone."
And Horlbeck was far from alone in her sentiments. If you were to page through the Quarterly, you would find very few columnists who don't publish e-mail addresses. The demands of work and family are cited by many who say that e-mail helps to accomplish a job that they might otherwise find overwhelming. What some people might find surprising is that this view is shared widely by many alumnae/i who didn't graduate in the '90s.
"I don't keep in touch with classmates outside of the role of secretary, but I have found that I get annoyed when someone doesn't have an e-mail address," Marge Land Largey '57 said, after first warning that she was in her 60s and thus, not as hip to technology as others. Compared to working the telephone and the U.S. postal service, e-mail makes it easy to keep up-to-date on what classmates are doing, she says. "Because our 45th Reunion is coming up, I think that e-mail will be a big help."
Marcia Gallicchio '83 is not the least bit surprised that the Internet is being embraced by alumnae/i of all ages. "At Lycos, we're seeing a lot of involvement from people in their 50s and 60s in our community chat rooms," says the Wheaton economics major, who now serves as the community manager for TerraLycos Corp., the company that oversees the giant Web portal, Lycos.com. "I've seen it with my own parents. Their curiosity started with the fact that every time I went home, I was on my computer. Now, two years after retirement, my parents IM me once a day to find out how I'm doing."
IM is slang for instant message, a way to converse with another person over the Internet in real time--extremely popular with the high school set. For most Wheaton alumnae/i, however, e-mail remains the digital medium of choice. The college currently has e-mail addresses for somewhat less than 50 percent of all alumnae/i. If recent national studies of college-educated women can be applied to Wheaton, the actual percentage of alumnae/i with e-mail addresses probably approaches 85 percent. And what can be accomplished by e-mail seems limited mainly by imagination. Gallicchio and five classmates, for instance, planned a vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., last January; they arranged everything from finding a house to rent and sharing pictures of it beforehand to divvying up the list of comestibles and distributing driving directions.
By contrast, the college's efforts to reach alumnae/i via e-mail have been modest, but that's changing. The Alumnae/i Association wants to reach out and involve more people in its programs, and technology appears to be one way to do that, says Sharon Howard '87, director of Alumnae/i Relations and Annual Giving. "We're not going to stop the conventional programs already in place, but if you want to engage new people--people who aren't participating very much or at all--you're going to have to do something different," Howard says."Technology can expand the range of opportunities for alumnae/i to be active and connected to Wheaton, and some of the things we can do with technology may appeal to people who can't be reached any other way."
There is some reason for Howard's optimism. As part of its long-range planning process, the Alumnae/i Association e-mailed a survey to every alumna/us for whom Wheaton had an e-mail address, and was overwhelmed by the speed and the scope of the response: within one day, more than 900 surveys were completed and returned, an astonishing 26 percent response rate in just 24 hours. Clearly, alumnae/i are sending Wheaton a message about the medium. In fact, a recent college survey showed that the majority of alumnae/i would welcome getting news from the college by e-mail. One small test of the concept of a digital newsletter has been operating, quietly, since last fall. The Quarterly has been producing a monthly e-mail newsletter to which alumnae/i Web surfers can subscribe. As of July, 115 people--nearly a dozen of whom work at the college--receive the monthly message.
"When I get the e-newsletter, I often call other people who are receiving it to say 'Hey, did you see that?' or I forward it to people who might not be registered, but I think would be interested," says Adam Bart '96. He appreciates the mix of academic, campus life and alumnae/i event news that it contains, and adds, "It's fun because it gets you to talk about Wheaton again."
Bart is part of an extremely active network of classmates who "talk" every day. "We'll have daily e-mails where one person will throw something out and then all day we'll get these one-liners on whatever the subject is," says Bart, who now works for Occidental College as associate director of the California institution's annual giving program. "Being on the West Coast, I always enter the conversation three hours after it's started, so I come in and rile them all up again."
Many colleges are using e-mail in more assertive ways. Bart said that Occidental used e-mail to send pledge reminders to a large group of young alumni who had not followed through on annual fund pledges, and had not responded to mail and telephone solicitations. "We got a great response. Not only did a lot of people fulfill their pledge after getting the e-mail, they thanked us for sending the reminder," he says. "The interesting thing was to look at when the messages were sent: at three in the morning, eleven at night. That's when these people were free."
Wheaton has consciously resisted the idea of electronic solicitations so far--although a final pledge reminder was sent via e-mail in late June--and focused more on developing services that draw people to the college. That strategy has not always worked, however. Wheaton's alumnae/i Web site, http://OnLyon.WheatonCollege.net, is a case in point. Perhaps 10 percent of alumnae/i have registered with the free service, which provides a Wheaton e-mail address; an online, searchable directory of alumnae/i; bulletin boards; campus news; and portal pages. "]What we've been hearing from people is that our marketing plan hasn't worked," says Howard. "The whole idea of sending a user ID and password in a two-page letter that they had to read through and save just doesn't work and we need to find a better way to get the word out.
"People want Web services to be quick and easy, and the registration for OnLyon just isn't easy enough, so people give up."
The story behind the young alumna who moved to Oakland, Calif., and posted an OnLyon bulletin board message seeking other Bay Area alumnae/i illustrates some of the challenges facing the college. Lena Moman '98 drove out to California with her dad last March, looking to set herself up in a new city. After finding a job and getting settled, Moman began to make friends, among them a Princeton graduate who was using that university's online alumni services to hunt for an apartment, look for jobs, and keep up on news from classmates. "She was getting answers to her questions back every day and I really got envious," says Moman, who began to wonder if her own college had any such service. "I didn't know OnLyon existed,"says Moman. "It's hard to reach young alumnae/i like me. We move every year and don't always tell the college where we are. We don't always get the Wheaton Quarterly, unless it trickles down to us from our parents, so we miss announcements about a lot of things."
Being more than a bit curious, however, Moman conducted a quick search of the Web and turned up the OnLyon site. Once registered, Moman looked up old friends in the directory. "That was great because I found some friends whom I had just completely lost track of," she says. Unfortunately, the response to her bulletin board posting didn't turn out nearly so well. One month after sending her message off to cyberspace, not one alumna/us has answered; it has been viewed just 16 times (probably half those viewings occurred during the writing of this article). "I still think this has great potential," says Moman, "but you have to find a way to get it jump-started."
The answer may lie in exploiting the technology to do things that just wouldn't be possible any other way. Imagine, for instance, inviting alumnae/i with knowledge of global poverty issues to spend an entire semester working with students studying the topic. Where distance, job demands and obligations to family and friends get in the way, the Internet removes those obstacles. Eonomics professor Gordon Weil will be joined, virtually, this fall by Diane Troderman '63, Debra Weiner '67, Ernesto Semedo '96, Karima Saleh '87, Katherine Devine '87 and Michele Weldon '90, each of whom will advise a small group of students developing a report on poverty in countries from the U.S. and Mexico to Russia and India. "This is an experiment and there will probably be some challenges along the way, but I'm positive it will be very interesting as a new way to connect students and alumnae/i,[per thou] says Howard, who plans to join the class on an audit basis to see firsthand how it works. "I'm excited about it; we're all looking forward to it. Professor Weil has already struck up close friendships with the alumnae/i who will be working with his students."
And since the Internet allows alumnae/i to return to the Wheaton classroom, they also can become students again--without the late-night trips to Wendell's or the heartburn that inevitably follows--through distance-learning programs. In each of the last two years, alumnae/i enrolled for long-distance versions of classes being offered to students on campus. And the response has been encouraging enough that Wheaton plans to continue this program, though so far no discussions have taken place on expanding the effort to reach more people.
Sandra Vose Marshall '57, a consultant who coaches clients--some of them religious organizations--in conflict resolution, long-range planning and management training, studied "Religion in Contemporary America" with 15 other Wheaton alumnae/i and a class of current students.
"I needed to know more about religions because I have been getting clients in denominations other than my own and I didn't know enough about what they believed and what their principles were," says Marshall, who considers the class a success and would certainly take another."I learned a lot about religious traditions that I previously knew nothing about." Still, she adds, taking a class long-distance--reading on your own, watching videotapes, chatting with other students on an electronic bulletin board, comparing it to all the traditional classes you've ever taken--has its attendant frustrations. First, no one, including Assistant Professor of Religion Barbara Darling-Smith, who taught the class, knew what to expect. Some students found they could not make the course work for them and dropped out of contact; others exercised their typing skills in long messages that were difficult to wade through. "Some of the exchanges got overwhelming," she says.
Interesting, but perhaps not surprising, is the story that Marshall tells about the end of her long-distance religion course. Five of the distance-learning students (including Marshall) and Darling-Smith met for lunch during Commencement/Reunion Weekend to put faces to names and continue the conversations begun online. And that physical meeting turned out to be the highlight of their virtual experience. "There ended up being a good core of maybe eight women who stayed in close touch and built a sense of community," she says."It was a wonderful idea for us to meet, a really good idea. I think it's a 'must' for these classes and I felt sorry for the people who were too far away to be able to visit campus for the day."
