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Class Notes

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By Peter S. Cahn

When graduates of my department publish a book or scale Mount Everest, they have their choice of three places to brag. The university's alumni magazine, a glossy quarterly, features class notes in every issue. The College of Arts and Sciences produces its own annual broadsheet with space for class notes. And for the past two years, I have been editing a newsletter for the anthropology department that includes notes from alumni.

The abundant interest in the activities of our former students goes beyond mere curiosity. It reflects the intensified campaign by public universities to cultivate a pool of potential donors. More than ever, faculty members are being recruited for the tasks of development, an endless process of wheedling that has come to consume every sector of the university.

At the University of Oklahoma, my employer, the proportion of the operating budget contributed by the state has declined from 35 percent 10 years ago to about 20 percent this year. During that same time, student tuition has increased dramatically, but not enough to cover the loss in public revenue.

Increasingly, the way to compensate for falling state appropriations has been through private giving. It is not new for the university president to be viewed as fund raiser in chief; what has changed is the creep of development duties across the campus.

A few years ago, the College of Arts and Sciences, my department's administrative home, hired its own development officer to supplement the universitywide efforts. One of his first suggestions to department heads was to improve communication with alumni so that they would remain connected to the university and become familiar with the ways in which their donations would be put to use. The easiest way to do that is through a newsletter.

My own undergraduate institution distributes a magazine, which makes me feel a part of the campus even though it has been nearly a decade since I was a student there. Even if I don't have time to read the articles, I always turn to the class-notes section to see if I spy news about anyone I know. The magazine conveniently puts all the alumni names in bold to facilitate gossip seekers like me.

Interested in establishing contact with our alumni, my department chairwoman asked me to compile the anthropology newsletter. As service activities go, that job is not too onerous and even affords an outlet for my frustrated journalistic desires. Moreover, I receive the satisfaction of hearing back from former students about how their anthropological training has been useful in the professional world.

Then the first check arrived. Every month the foundation that administers departmental donations sends an account statement to our chairwoman. Usually that statement reflects no activity. But this year, the statement recorded several deposits from alumni who were motivated to donate after reading the newsletter.

Suddenly, the newsletter was not a once-a-semester commitment, but the cornerstone of a larger strategy to raise money for student scholarships in the department. My energized chairwoman and I made an appointment with the college's development officer to discuss what steps we could take to build on our early success.

We started with the idea of a reception for an emeritus professor who had recently published a book. Under the guidance of the development officer, the plan became a $50-a-head, sit-down dinner with tours of the natural-history museum collections.

Next, we discussed the establishment of a board of visitors. Those prominent alumni would meet annually to plan outreach activities and encourage classmates to give to the department. In exchange for endowing a scholarship, a donor would get naming rights and a chance to meet with the recipient. The development officer talked excitedly about establishing ties with local businesses and Indian tribes.

As we left the meeting, I looked around the newly renovated building that houses the office of the dean and his staff. Engraved plates recognizing distinguished alumni decorated the walls. One wing, for academic advising, had been named for an alumnus who became a state senator. Even the elevator carried a plaque with the name of a donor to the college.

It's encouraging that so many alumni and friends of the university have given generously to support our academic mission. Yet in that moment, it seemed to me that the relentless massaging of donor relations could easily eclipse my scholarly activities.

There was no longer comfort in knowing that I could rely on a professional fund-raising staff in tailored suits to hold cocktail parties and plan reunions to coax dollars from alumni. I would have to dust off my blazer and join my fellow faculty members in organizing and attending such events.

Tightening budget constraints have created a vicious cycle in which development activities lead to more of the same; the newsletter builds on the Web site, the annual banquet follows from the department holiday party. At first, we envisioned a pot of money to pay for graduate-student travel to conferences and to award outstanding undergraduates at commencement. Next we're aiming for an endowed professorship.

This is not to disparage the worthy goals of cultivating philanthropy. One lesson I've learned is that donors must be trained to give. That is why many colleges organize a senior-class gift (and sometimes junior, sophomore, and freshman gifts). Once inculcated, the habit of donating not only enriches the university, but also strengthens connections between alumni and the institution.

Yet, as development strategies become more sophisticated, alumni become potential customers to be solicited ever more aggressively. Coaches have long been a part of that campaign, but now regular faculty members have been called to participate in the raising of private dollars that has become so essential to the health of public universities.

State-supported universities like mine are in a bind. While a smaller and smaller proportion of our expenditures are financed by public money, we are simultaneously prohibited from raising tuition beyond certain thresholds set by legislators. To support disciplines where large government grants for research are uncommon, we must rely increasingly on the generosity of alumni donors.

So twice a year I assemble notes about the events of the semester and the accomplishments of our alumni into a departmental newsletter. Before I send it out to our list of graduates, I make sure to put all the names in bold.