Hawaii Pacific University Alumni Unity Project

Follow-Along Guide
Ty Tamagawa Christoph Dauer Gina Lunde Ingrid Bugge Stange Linn Skulstad Bailey Snider

The Entrepreneurial Spirit of HPU A Holistic Approach to Unity The Five Steps toward a network of united alumni:
Class Collaboration International Counselors Coordinated Communication Sports & Welcome Week Complete Media Picture
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Domestic Affairs at HPU

Survey Results

Class Collaboration In a national survey of college students, researchers set out to find out what exactly makes a college great to attendees. Among school spirit and good teachers, a sense of knowing that their school is preparing them for the future listed highly as well. College students want professionalism and a start up on their future careers while they are in college. (Alderman 1995)

Experiencing the collaborative setting of working in teams is important for college students; it helps develop complex social skills. Groups get more done, and the hands-on work and practice at real world skills allow students to branch off into a world bigger than themselves, and take ownership of their own education. (Davis 1993) In a book titled 10 Taught Lessons Ive Learned About Becoming an Entrepreneur, successful entrepreneurs and other business people listed the top lessons theyve learned during their careers. The book strongly emphasized the importance of teamwork, networking, and building relationships. (Slavin 2013) In another article yet, titled 25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs successful business people identified the top characteristics that make an entrepreneur great. Among these again were the recurring theme of networking, relationships, and working in teams/groups. (Stephenson 2010) Student collaboration creates a sense of place, diversity, and molds networks that can extend beyond national borders. (WPI 2008) It is important for students to develop a sense of place during their college experience. (AoG. 2013) HPUs Alumni team is fascinated by the entrepreneurial spirit of the students. They want to create their own businesses. They thrive in innovative and creative learning environments. (Hilory 2011)

HPUs International Affairs

Institutional networks are always something public. They take part in a web of relationships which also consists without you. It is quite different with a personal network. This consists through your own contact and interactions. A personal network represents an individual network of relationships. It reflects the history of your own personal 3

contacts with other people. Your address book and contact notes are traces which you left behind them by communication events. Personal networks are deliberately systematically designed, constructed and used. This is more than just cultivating relationships in the classical sense. [He/She] who uses networking properly has more potential for success than the one who maintains unsystematic good relations with many people. Targeted networking automatically optimizes the chances that contains all these relationships. Personal networking is a system of techniques and manipulations. You may simply adopt or modify to suit your personal taste. (Scheler 2000) Counsellor-Program By former students and for former students, this volunteer-based global network of former HPU students could offer alumni great opportunities to give other alumni advice in various parts of work and private life. Example: A Japanese former HPU student offers his knowledge about: what to prepare for in job interviews, housing, national culture etc. in Japan. There could be an extra tab on the HPU alumni website where you can find the following informations about every voluntarily-registered alumnus/alumna: name, country, city, occupation, graduation year and email address optional: A photo and further informations, i.e. special knowledge about topic X

Communication
Unique entrepreneurial spirit HPU students have a unique entrepreneurial spirit. The people behind Moods of Norway a truly successful company in Norway, are an example of this. They got their business idea when living in Hawaii and studying at HPU. By engaging them during their student experience, HPU could have 4

made a powerful ally; other Norwegians would want to come here, HPU could have offered to send interns to Moods of Norway, or even had Moods of Norway design some HPU apparel. Indeed, they are only one of many examples of alumni of whom HPU should be proud and use as an inspiration for potential students, and networking for current students and fellow alumni. Student-Friendly Email Outreach Mobile devices open 47% of all email. This indicates that email--when used correctly--is a very accessible tool. College students generally prefer to receive email to their phones, but according to our survey, 14% of HPU students complain about email volume. Therefore, we have to filter the emails through areas of interests when subscribing and also coordinate the email publishing. To achieve this, students should have the opportunity to subscribe for emails during the Welcome Week, and subscribe with their personal email. A majority of those who complained about email cited redundancies within the daily email blasts. Time, amount, content, layout, sender and receiver are important. Collaboration between senders is a good first step to eliminate repeated messages and to consolidate the mass of emails into organized, digestible content. This in turn will contribute to complete HPUs social media connection.

School Spirit
We can learn from schools that have the unified spirit HPU desires:
Examples from Huffington post: Duke university Indiana University Ohio State University Oregon State University Penn state Stanford University Syracuse University

Clemson University Gonzaga(Las Vegas, Nevada) Louisiana State University Miami University in Oxford Texas A&M UC Berekley UCLA University of Florida University of Michigan Notre Dame University of Colorado University of Southern California University of Texas, Austin University of Wisconsin Virginia Tech Washington State University

What do these schools have in common? Wearing school colors to school and sports Sports unite current and former students and create a common goal to rally around! Problem with HPU? Atherton field is close to the Windward campus, but far from Honolulu and Waikiki When evaluating Hawaii Pacific University it is important to look at schools that are highly successful in terms of creating the intangible spirit for which all schools strive. One of the key discoveries we made on this subject is that there is a high correlation between college athletics and alumni involvement. The most striking information is that the team does not even need to be successful in order to create more buzz around them and the university in general (McDearmon 2013). So how can we create a buzz around HPU athletics? We believe that 6

involving students in supporting school sports early in their school careers will build a foundation for a growing devotion to HPU that will survive beyond graduation. Welcome Week HPU has an introduction week. However, most of the international students are unfamiliar with the setup. In Europe, specifically in Norway, the welcome week is the biggest event of the year for both new and current students. Most of the activities are not class-related and focus instead on having fun. This provides a great opportunity for the students to get to know the campus, activities, and organizations of HPU. In order to attract a greater turnout, it is vital that information about the welcome week is provided far in advance of new student arrival. We believe that to connect all the HPU students to something theyll want to be a part of for years to come, welcome week should be all-inclusive. This will create a connection and enthusiasm early in the semester for both the long term students as well as for those who are only here for one semester. Activities, volunteering for a student organization, or just becoming the number one fan of the basketball team will provide a platform and meeting place for students with similar interests.

Media
Social Media Social media surrounds us. It is ubiquitous, it is everywhere and it is growing. Social media is an ideal way of getting people to talk about what your business is doing in this case the HPU Alumni network. Through social media one can connect to a larger audience on a global level which is exactly what an international hotspot like HPU needs. Furthermore, one cannot forget that todays students have grown up with social media. 7

The current status of social media usage for HPU Alumni today consists of three sites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Research conducted through our survey showed that 55% of students who answered our survey are part of an HPU social media group. However, 73% did not know that HPU uses Twitter. The first step to complete the picture is to make the media platforms all connect. When tweeting, automatically post that tweet to LinkedIn. Instagram has become a powerful new hit for smartphone users, so adding Instagram to the HPU Alumni scene is the next step. Use Instagram to document Alumni engagement, connectivity and events. Use hashtags to brand HPU Alumni. Print Media In the U.S today, there are five colleges using social media specifically to boost student-alumni relations. One of them is Princeton University. Their Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW) magazine is distributed to 68,000 alumni members with one mission in mind to increase and promote student loyalty and communication between alumni. In the magazine they provide their members with up-to-date news, interviews, Princeton sports, and in-depth profiles of both undergraduate and graduate alumni. HPU provides an Alumni Newsletter too. The readership is unknown to us, though we have reason to believe its a little fewer than five digits! Let the success of the PAW be an inspiration and consider doing a make-over of the Alumni Newsletter.

References

Alderman, Lesley. (1995). Students Tell What Makes A College Great. Retrieved from: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1995/09/05/206695 AoG. (2013). The Sense of Place. Retrieved from: http://www.artofgeography.com/info/the-sense-of-place College Xpress. (Unknown). College Xpress. In Colleges with Plenty of Campus Spirit. Retrieved November 27, 2013, from http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-plenty-of-campus-spirit/409/. Davis, Barbara. (1993). Using Groups in classes. Retrieved from: http://teaching.berkeley.edu/using-groups-classes-encouraging-study-groups Hilory, Bonnie. (2011). Alumni Team Seeks to Improve Alumni Relations. http://www3.hpu.edu/AnnualFund/e-newsletter_2011/march/article.htm Huffington Post. (March 7, 2012). Huffington Post. In 23 College Campuses With The Most School Spirit. Retrieved November 27, 2013, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/23-college-campuses-with-spirit_n_13266 61.html#slide=760170. McDearmon, J. J. (2013). Hail to Thee, Our Alma Mater: Alumni Role Identity at the Relationship to Institutional Support Behaviors. Research In Higher Education, 54(3), 283-302.doi:10.1007/s11162-012-9271-6 Scheler, Uwe (2000). Erfolgsfaktor Networking. Mit Beziehungs intelligenz die richtigen Kontakte knpfen, pflegen und nutzen. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag GmbH. Slavin, Amanda. (2013). 10 Taught Lessons Ive learned about becoming an Entrepreneur. Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-it-takes-to-become-an-entrepreneur-2013-2 Stephenson, James. (2010). 25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs. Retrieved from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/200730 WPI, (2008). Promoting Student Collaboration. Retrieved from:

http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/Idea/collaboration.html

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