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Cossatot Community College |
CCCUA Launches “Great Alumni Hunt”
18 February 2005
DE QUEEN – In an effort to collect current information on missing alumni, the Great Alumni Hunt has been launched by CCCUA, according to Marketing Director Mark Riley.
Riley said, “We launched this effort because the College is applying for more and more grants, and we are finding that one piece of information foundations and grant-making entities request is data on the level of alumni involvement. We don’t have an alumni association at present, but are taking steps toward forming one. One of the pieces of that puzzle is to locate as many of our missing alumni as possible, so that we can more effectively canvas our total alumni population with information about forming an association.”
The College recently conducted an alumni census by mail to collect data on a variety of topics of interest to foundations. “The response to the survey has been gratifying,” Riley said. “Typically these censuses have about a 3 or 4 percent rate of return, and we are running a little ahead of that.” More than 2,000 census forms were mailed out in late January, and about 500 of those were returned as undeliverable. He said, “That tells us that, even though we paid to have our mailing list updated in 2003 to convert addresses from the old rural routes to 911 addresses, we are still missing a lot of people. Since we have such a high percentage of alumni who live in our service area, we want them to know that we are genuinely interested in getting input from them on improving the curriculum, procedures, and the College as a whole for future generations.”
Riley added that a bulk emailing was conducted today to alumni who gave the College an email address while they were students. “Email addresses turn over even faster than physical addresses, but I feel that the message got through to quite a high percentage of those for whom we had email addresses.” He noted that the purpose of the email was to inform alumni of a page on the College’s website where all of the lost alumni are listed, and that the prize for the alumnus who turns in the most corrected addresses by Monday, February 28, will receive a prize. The page is located at cccua.edu, and visitors should click on “View Lost Alumni List” under “CCCUA News”.
“The prize is a Zaras desk set, the same kind we give to people who speak at our commencements,” he said. “It’s a beautiful walnut box engraved on the lid with the College’s logo, and has a walnut-barrel pen, calculator and notepad.” He concluded, “We tried to make it as easy as possible for people to report contact info on our lost alumni. All you have to do is click on the person’s ID number and name, and an email box will pop up in your browser with the person’s ID number and name in the subject line. We have already seen quite a few responses to this, and hope it will continue to grow.”
Cossatot Community College offers both technical certification and Associate’s degrees in a wide range of fields on its campus at De Queen, at extension sites at Nashville and Ashdown, and at cccua.edu. CCCUA collaborates with other colleges and universities to offer bachelor's and master's degrees on its three campuses. It has an enrollment of more than 1,100 students, and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
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