Team Alumni Associations

[Thing2_1723]

I graduated from high school in 2012 and I tried really hard to stay in touch with my team. Unfortunately, school puts me 3 and a half hours from my hometown so I was only able to go to kickoff in 2013 and one build day before heading back to Rolla. Both times I showed up, those who knew who I was were ecstatic to see me and I felt very welcome. My team has always prided itself on being student built and student lead so I had many of my friends explain to me what they were doing and planning to do in the coming weeks. This past year was completely different; I was caught in a snowstorm stuck for a week in St. Louis and unable to make it to kickoff. I was able to make it to one build day, but the mood had completely changed (except for about 4 people who had been on the team my senior year). I was ignored by about 80% of the team. Over the weekend, I drove to St. Louis to cheer them on and the trend followed. I can only assume that this was because none of them knew who I was. I really want the students that go through this team to know not just who I am, but the people who where on the team with me and before me.

While in college, I have joined a(n engineering) sorority and we do our best to have the best alumni relationships that we can. I know more alumnae from my sorority that graduated before I even started college than I know members on my old team. I know that one of my sisters graduating next month has started working on putting together an alumnae association for our chapter so we have better contact.

Does your team have an alumni association? What did that creation process look like? Did it work? How many people are involved? What information do you get from the team and how often? I would love to continue to be a part of this team even from 203 miles away.

[cadandcookies]

Team 2220 does not have an official alumni associating, but we do maintain strong relations with our alumni through weekly newsletters during build season and inviting alumni to help both our team and other teams during and for a couple weeks after kickoff. We've also had alumni in the professional world come back and give us demonstrations of what they're working on (one of these was when I was a sophomore-- a team graduate who was working on creating small commercial quadcopters who talked about engineering design process. Very cool guy).

We also periodically send out surveys to alumni to ask about their careers and college majors. We never really voluntarily let alumni leave the team

[Jscout11]

Team 193 in run exclusively by MORT Alumni, and is a great way for alum who have gone off into STEM Careers to come back and give valuable knowledge to new members of our team. The whole experience is something that we feel is very unique and are working on publishing a more formal paper/"Beta Binder" next year.

We also have a pretty good amount of alumni that continue to be involved with FIRST on other FRC and FLL teams, and we honor a few of them each year at our year end celebration by inducting them into the "Alumni Hall of Fame" We're a very family oriented team, and many of our alumni have younger siblings go through the program. We also continue to see support from the families of these alumni as well in many ways.

Many of our alumni also come back every year for the two FIRST events that we hold (FLL in December, FRC in March) to come out and support us, as well as unofficial events like Kickoff and our end of build season "Rollout" event. We have kept track of all of our alumni since 1996 and have information on all of them on our website.

Our alumni also come back to help teach summer seminars to discuss the basics on strategic design, drivetrains, programming, etc before our more formal new member training in the fall, which is led by current students.

[Jeffafa M]

I am in the process of creating one for Chuck 84.

Right now it looks like me reaching out to my network of contacts of people that I knew while on the team. Facebook helps.

[Oblarg]

449 doesn't have an "alumni association," but we do host an annual alumni dinner in November where the alumni get together and meet the current team. It's a lot of fun.

[Keegbot]

Our team doesn't have an alumni association, but we do have a google group where we occasionally update the alum on what's happening. Being from Hawaii and having most of our alum in colleges on the mainland, we generally only see the former students during their Winter break or if we Skype them.