We Envision 

An alumni–campus community in which we all benefit from the associated bonds. Alumni enjoy letting current students know how their education was valuable, and how they got their first job. They feel seen by their alma mater for their successes, and supported by the alumni network. They are available to students for guidance, particularly with the transition to postgraduate employment or postgraduate education. Some contribute financially in ways they find rewarding, and which expand our capacities to teach, learn, create, and discover. Students on campus have exposure to alumni, which helps them to imagine possible futures for themselves, both professionally and as future contributing members of our alumni community. Alumni recruit our graduating students to their companies. Faculty and staff appreciate hearing from alumni about the value of their time at UC Davis, they celebrate alumni successes, and some help alumni to see opportunities to contribute. The benefits of the alumni-campus community are so great and readily visible, that for some prospective students it is a deciding factor in their choice of UC Davis.

How to Get Started with Alumni Engagement

You might have a robust program of alumni engagement already, or you might be starting from scratch. If the latter, we recommend you start small, and then look for opportunities to improve your engagement over time. Here are some concrete steps you can take:

1. Make an appointment with the office of College Relations and Development (hereafter referred to as ‘CLAS Development’) to find out what they can help you do. You might want to also consult their own ‘Chair Toolkit’ here.
2. Make an appointment with Professor Lloyd Knox who led the group that wrote this guide. He will be happy to meet with you, schedule permitting.
3. Check in with your faculty about what connections with alumni already exist.
4. Pick one activity from the examples below to get started (start small). We recommend you do something to help alumni to contribute directly to your current students, such as inviting recently graduated alumni to talk with majors about their careers – either in-person or over Zoom.

Note that investment in positive student experiences, as well as having its own direct benefits, is excellent preparation for successful subsequent alumni engagement. When students feel supported, connected, and proud of their department or institution, they are far more likely to stay engaged, contribute, and serve as ambassadors after graduation. For more on investing in students’ experiences, and how that supports future alumni engagement, see Appendix D, and the forthcoming report of the Student Experiences Working Group.

Engaging Alumni to Communicate with Students

We emphasize connecting alumni directly with students because it is the engagement method with the broadest appeal to our alumni, and it can really make a big difference for our students. Alumni, in general, love to talk about how they got their first job, describe how their education was valuable, and generally dispense wisdom about post-degree life. For many students the world of post-degree work is a vast anxiety-provoking mystery. Hearing from alumni allows them to imagine new possibilities for themselves, reduces anxiety, and increases their confidence to pursue more vigorously their own intellectual and creative interests. Faculty and staff members facilitating these connections find it very rewarding, and it gives them valuable feedback about what our students take away from their time at UC Davis. It’s a win-win-win!

Another benefit is that this alumni engagement is (obviously) very visible to our students. They get to learn in the most powerful way, by seeing it in action, how to be an alum. It plants a seed in their minds that they can also give back in this way when they are alumni.

Finally, we note that engaging alumni to communicate with students can kickstart a virtuous cycle. It creates positive student experiences, which, as mentioned above, supports those students to later engage as alumni.

Alumni Engagement Programs

We’ve sorted these into ones that facilitate alum-student communication and connection, and ones that mostly do not do that. Within those two groupings, the items are roughly arranged from least effort required to most effort required. The degree of effort required can really vary depending on the details of implementation, as well as details of the department doing the implementing.

Programs that facilitate alum–student communication and connection

The Infrastructure of Connection: Alumni Data

Contact information is obviously fundamentally important to our ability to engage alumni. Many department chairs with whom we consulted prior to writing this guide complained about access to good data. Here we provide some background information about how alumni data are handled on campus, and why, and the quality of the data. We also then describe ways in which departments can help to improve data quality.

“Why won’t Development give me our alumni contact info!??!”

It can be frustrating to not have direct access to data on campus about “our” alumni. Whether things could be better or not, the truth is that the data are centralized (at the university level) and there are protocols in place for using it. The centralization, limited access, and protocols, are designed to prevent alumni from feeling bombarded by frequent emails from different individuals or groups at the university. Even though requests for alumni and donor information are supported through the university’s systems, there are important timelines and guidelines to keep in mind. Requests for donor information may take up to 20 business days to process in accordance with mass communication policies, with an additional 10 business days required if the request involves solicitation. As such, it is best to provide advance notice of intent and confirm specific list criteria
as early as possible.

Please note that all list data is considered valid for 30 days; after that point, a new request will be required to ensure accuracy. For each request, departments must also sign a form affirming appropriate use of the data before any private information can be released. Because departments are provided with data rather than direct access to internal systems, no training in LMS or HIPAA certification is required. Once prepared, the requested list and associated data will be shared directly with the department. While CLAS Development will oversee and approve communications and solicitation requests, the development of content and dissemination of materials will be handled at the department level. 

Know that depending on the complexity of your request your data request could take a month to return but many are able to be assembled more quickly.
To request a list please send your request to [email protected]. You may get asked a few clarifying questions but a few things to provide or consider are: 

• Your department
• Any specific majors or graduation years
• Are you looking in any specific cities or regions?
• Are you inviting people to an event or just communicating? This is important to honor
  communication preferences.
• Is this a mail or email communication?
• Will you use this data within a month once you get it back (the answer needs to be yes!)
• What information do you need to know about your population? (name, spouse names, salutations, address, employment information)

• Will you be handling the data and do you have an alumni data security agreement on file with DEVAR?

  You will receive a response from a member of the CLAS Development team within two days of submission, acknowledging the inquiry and including any follow-up questions. In that communication, you will be provided with an estimated delivery date of information.
  Note: there is a university policy surrounding emailing populations of 250 individuals or more. Therefore, if you are requesting email addresses know that CLAS Development will be working
  to secure approvals to send the email but will need a copy of the email and the targeted send date to get the approval. Solicitation of funds follows different guidelines and policies and you will need to consult with the CLAS development office accordingly.

Improving data quality

The deeper problem, in our view, is the quality of the alumni data held by the university. We have lost track of many of our alumni. One reason for this is that student email addresses are now only valid for one year from the time of their graduation. We have recommended that the university find a way for students to have university email addresses which are permanently valid. In the meantime, there are things we can do to improve the quality of alumni data.

We recommend that every department implement a means of collecting email addresses from students that are the ones they view as permanent. There are various ways of doing this. For graduate students, this is perhaps best done early on, as part of their orientation process. For our undergraduate majors, this could possibly be collected during meetings with their advisor. We can be upfront about why we are requesting such data. We want to be able to stay in touch with our alumni! The more students have seen evidence of alumni engagement (such as through a “featured alum of the month” program), the more they will want to maintain contact, and therefore will want to give us this data. Collection at the department level is much more likely to be effective than via an exit survey that comes to them from unfamiliar university staff. One way to do this is via a “How to Alum” document distributed to graduating students; see Appendix F for an example. Please also see information regarding collection and maintenance of data in the CLAS development section of this document.

The Cal Aggie Alumni Association is the responsible entity for the entire college that houses all alumni data. There is an on-going effort and process that at the time of commencement,
students are asked for a contact email that is separate from their institutional address. That information is shared and maintained by DEVAR. On their website, and at the bottom of all their
communications, is a link to the “Update My Info” page allowing individuals to provide their updated information.

While data collection may be done at the department level, storage and maintenance is handled at the division level where the official alumni data stewardship responsibilities lie. DEVAR serves to hold the records for alumni so it serves us all to provide our updates to DEVAR to update their records. Alumni data has also been the target of information security attacks at many institutions so it is a data security necessity to provide data to DEVAR for updating and not maintain separate alumni databases.

DEVAR is regularly receiving updates via online gifts and other resources so our collective power provides the best portrait of an alumni record. This is also what makes for the best list and records when we need to request data for alumni email or mailing lists. Note that many departments across UC Davis have been using the broad “Update Your Information” alumni form via links in their newsletters to secure alumni updates in an efficient fashion.

Coordinating with CLAS Development

This guide is broadly about alumni engagement. Here we include a little bit about fundraising,
aka “development.” Our focus here is quite narrow. We are not aiming to guide you in how to cultivate potential donors, etc. We just want you to know that it is important that you bring CLAS Development into this process. 

If you are doing any fundraising, including at the early stages of cultivating a particular prospect, please contact the CLAS Development Office [email protected]. In fact, they might be able to help you identify prospective donors. Ideally, before any contact with a donor, or prospective donor, you will let your Development officer know who you are planning to contact/meet with, and discuss your plan for the meeting with them. They can offer valuable guidance. The Development officers may very well have relationships with these people too, and it is difficult for them to conduct their side of that relationship well if they are uninformed about other university contacts.

Another reason to keep a Development officer in the loop is that gift giving is governed by a lot of policies. You do not want to have to become familiar with all these policies! Writing up a gift agreement is not something allowed by policy. Engaging Development early in this process can prevent the potential donor from becoming disappointed and frustrated, due to having received incorrect expectations from you.

Please reference these documents for specific guidance and policies:
Solicitation and Acceptance of Private Support (260-15)
Gift Processing and Receipting (260-25)
University of California Development Reference Guide (2025)

Other Campus Resources

We include here some pointers to relevant campus resources beyond those of CLAS Development.
 

Cal Aggie Alumni Association (CAAA) – Alumni, Friends, Faculty and Staff
The Cal Aggie Alumni Association serves as a central hub for alumni engagement, offering meaningful pathways for individuals interested in supporting fundraising and development efforts outside of formal advancement structures.
CAAA Membership FAQs
Stay Connected with UC Davis
Update My Info
UC Davis Giving Societies
We are so grateful for our many loyal alumni, friends, parents, faculty and staff. Their extraordinary commitment and generous contributions help us preserve and strengthen our excellence in academics, research and public service. To recognize these gifts, UC Davis has several programs based on levels of support.
Crowdfund UC Davis
This university-sanctioned crowdfunding platform allows you to be part of a grassroots fundraising movement that enables a variety of campus groups to make projects related to groundbreaking research, student support and public service a reality.
UC Davis Foundation
The UC Davis Foundation is the non-profit organization that governs the philanthropic efforts at UC Davis through a distinguished volunteer Board of Trustees.
 

Appendices

These appendices are for implementation details for particular programs. Please use them as examples and feel free to make your own modifications. Also, we intend to expand this document with more such appendices. If you have an existing alumni engagement program you think is working well, and are willing to share the details, please let us know. You can email Lloyd Knox at [email protected] with “Chair’s Guide Appendix” in the subject line.
 

Appendix A: Hosting an Alumni Panel

An alumni panel is a great way for students to learn about possible post-degree careers, and it does not take that much work to put one on. Many alumni are quite happy to serve on such a panel, and will even travel to campus at their own expense to do so. With such a program you can:
 

• Inform students in your department about possible post-degree careers
• Connect them with a supportive professional network
• Relay to them the wisdom of alumni who once were where they are now
• Reduce their anxieties about the future

The Career Center also hosts panels and other networking events involving alumni. They invite your collaboration. You might want to contact them right at the beginning.
 

Deciding on who to invite: We recommend having 3 panelists who graduated within the past 5 to 10 years, and who are as diverse as a group of 3 can be, including in their fields of work. The reason to focus on the more recent graduates is that their experiences will likely be more immediately relevant to our current students.

To find your panelists, you can simply solicit your faculty members for suggestions. If that seems to be insufficient, you can ask CLAS Development to send out an email with a link to a Google form in which they can state their name, line of work, and a paragraph or two about what they would like to share in such a panel.

Scheduling the event: Picking a day and time that works for students will be key. Consult with some students in your target group. Consult with your undergraduate program advisor, or graduate program advisor, depending on who the primary audience is. Set aside 60 minutes for the formal part of the event and 20 to 30 minutes for people to interact informally afterwards.

Publicizing the event: If there is a relevant student club, recruit them to encourage student participation. You can learn about and connect with student organizations through the Center for Student Involvement (CSI)/AggieLife. Also post flyers and send email.

Preparing panelists: Supply a few questions to each of your panelists ahead of time. Here are some examples:

• What do you do in your job? What is your work like?
• How did your UC Davis education prepare you for this work?
• How did you get your first job?
• Do you have any advice for undergraduates in our program who might be interested in getting a job like yours?

Moderating the panel: Let the students know that there will be time for questions after hearing from each of the panelists. Spend 10 to 15 minutes with one panelist before moving on to the next one. Ask them the questions you asked them to think about ahead of time. Then open the panel up for questions from the audience. Be prepared to stimulate conversation yourself if necessary.

Appendix B: Creating an Alumni Seminar Program

We know of alumni seminar programs that have been run in Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy, and in History. This is a 1-unit seminar in your department (or perhaps for a group of departments) offered one quarter per year. Most (or all) class meetings the students hear from someone who holds the degree that the students are now pursuing – usually an alum. This alum tells their career story. Students learn about how they got their first job, what they found valuable about their education, what it’s like to work in their field, how to break into that field, etc.
With such a program you can:

• Inform students in your department about possible post-degree careers
• Connect them with a supportive professional network
• Relay to them the wisdom of alumni who once were where they are now
• Reduce their anxieties about the future
• Increase their confidence to pursue their creative and intellectual interests

Here is one way to implement such a course, in a nutshell:

• A faculty member doing this for three quarters has their teaching load reduced by one course. This feature makes the program sustainable from a faculty workload perspective.
• In January, the course instructor solicits faculty colleagues for any leads they might have on our alumni who might be interesting speakers.
• In February they start inviting speakers, with an eye toward having a line-up for spring quarter that is diverse along many dimensions.
• Choice of time of day and day of week is important for student enrollment. In Physics & Astronomy here is what worked: Each Friday of spring quarter at 12:10 pm the class meets and we hear from the speaker. The instructor moderates and makes sure there is time for Q & A.
• The department chair’s assistant provides the speakers with a parking pass and the instructor takes them out to lunch at Gunrock, although some speakers attend by Zoom.
• We suggest starting this as a 198. You can invite grad students to attend as well, but they do not need the course credit so there is no need for a graduate-level version.
• The weekly assignment can be as minimal as providing a few takeaways from each seminar. A final assignment requires a longer student reflection on the whole course.
• We pass along some of these takeaways to the speakers in a ‘thank you’ email. Speakers generally really appreciate this positive feedback.

When first getting started, to create a database of potential speakers, we recommend you reach out to CLAS Development. Ask them to send out an email solicitation to all of the alumni from your department. Have the email point to a Google form that can collect the information you want to use to decide who to invite. You can read the submitted information in the automatically-generated spreadsheet.

The series of speakers for each quarter should be curated with an eye toward diversity along a number of dimensions: gender, bachelors as terminal degree — those who went on to advanced degrees, type of industry, years since graduation, and possibly others relevant to your department. Note that the experience of landing a first job will be more relatable for the students if the alum is a more recent graduate: within five to ten years. More senior alumni bring the benefit of their additional experience, broader perspectives, and wisdom.

The program described above can also be supplemented in a number of ways:

• Have a class meeting that is devoted to networking so the students can make the most of these visits and potentials to connect with alumni.
• Require students to create a LinkedIn profile and have three informational interviews.
• Require each student to have three one-on-one 20-minute meetings, each with one of the seminar’s speakers, and set up a mechanism for scheduling these.
• Arrange for the visiting alum to gather with faculty in some way. In the past, Chemistry has done this with a blind wine-tasting challenge.

For more details, see this set of slides on the program in Physics and Astronomy. You can also reach out to Professor Lloyd Knox who has been running this program since 2007.

Appendix C: Creating an annual alumni newsletter

CLAS Development values departmental alumni newsletters and can provide significant assistance in their creation. This process is being updated by CLAS Development and Communications. We expect more detailed information to be available by the Fall 2026 quarter.

Appendix D: Start Early!

Effective alumni engagement is rooted in the relationships, experiences, and sense of belonging that students develop during their time in a program. When students feel supported, connected, and proud of their department or institution, they are far more likely to stay engaged, contribute, and serve as ambassadors after graduation.
Alumni engagement is best when built upon:

• Meaningful academic and mentoring relationships, which help students feel seen and valued.
• Positive classroom, research, and co-curricular experiences that give students something worth remembering and returning to.
• Early involvement in departmental culture, such as invitations to seminars, events, and networking opportunities.
• A clear sense of community and identity, cultivated through consistent communication, shared values, and collective achievements.

In other words, alumni loyalty doesn’t suddenly appear at commencement. It is the cumulative result of years of connection, support, and engagement during students’ undergraduate and graduate programs. By investing in students’ experiences now, the department lays the foundation for a strong, vibrant, and supportive alumni network in the future.

For more guidance on how to invest in students’ experiences see the report of the Student Experience Working Group.

Appendix E: Alumni Mixers at Professional Society Meetings

As mentioned above Chemistry hosts an alumni gathering at the bi-annual meetings of their professional society (the American Chemical Society) and the Music department does something similar.

Music has lately experimented with an off-site, informal dinner for current students, faculty, and alumni at the annual American Musicological Society conference. They have had success with this format, which the faculty organizer described as "less expensive and more intimate" than what other schools were doing.

Appendix F: How to Alum

This is a two-page document (fits on one sheet of paper) for dissemination to graduating students (for example, by handing out at a departmental graduation ceremony)

How to Alum

Ways to Engage with your University and Fellow Alumni, and Why

Dear graduating student,
Completing a physics degree at UC Davis is no small feat, and we’re proud to celebrate this milestone with you as you begin your journey as alumni. We are grateful that you entrusted us with guiding your education. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to support your growth as a physicist.

Soon you will be leaving UC Davis. You are all off to do many different things: more school, starting a job, looking for a job, or just taking some time off. Throughout your life you will wear a variety of hats, and play many different roles. One role you will always have is that of alum/alumna/alumnus of UC Davis and of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Here we provide guidance on how to wear this hat well, for your sake and for ours. TL;DR: 1)Stay in touch, 2) Reach out for help, and 3) Provide support when and how it feels right to you.

Stay in Touch

One thing we want you to know is that we really do hope you’ll stay connected with the department and your fellow alumni. Whatever you are doing, and no matter how well you are doing, your experiences and updates enrich our community. We also hope you will want to hear from us occasionally. If you do, please register the email address here (link to very short Google
form) that you would like us to use. Sadly, your UC Davis email address will expire in a year. We also wish it would last forever.

We have an annual alumni newsletter. We recently added a feature to this on alumni updates. We hope you will want to be sure to receive this, to get news from our department, as well as
your fellow alumni. We hope to someday get your news to include there as well. 

We are delighted that we have maintained contact with a great number of our alumni. From these contacts, we know that they are, overall, eager to help out our current students, and their
fellow alumni. When we invite people to come speak in an alumni seminar, they usually say yes. They travel here at their own expense. They are thoughtful about what to tell our current students about what it’s like to work in their particular area, how they got their first job, what about their education was valuable, things they wish they had done differently, etc. And they almost always provide their contact information to our students, and make themselves available for career-launching support. They find this very rewarding. Some day you might as well.

Reach out for Help

For now, we want you to know that this network is out there for you, ready to help if you manage to reach out for it. This moment might feel exciting to you, or one full of worry, or both at the same time. Transitions can be difficult. But you are not alone. You are now a node in a powerful network, our alumni network. Networks are often the difference between a job application that never makes it through HR, and landing a job.

Networking often feels challenging. To build your confidence to reach out, there is the helpful Career Resource Manual¹ developed by the UC Davis Career Center. They also run a networking workshop you can take, and
have plenty of other career-oriented resources available to you for the rest of your life. For the first year after graduation you even have access to their
one-on-one advising. We have a more physics-student-specific list of resources on our departmental website here.

Provide support when and how it feels right to you

Eventually you will be in a place to provide support to a new batch of students, and to your fellow alumni. We hope you will join this network as a supportive member, for example by
providing informational interviews, or access to your own network. Maybe you will be in a position to hire one of our new graduates!

You will undoubtedly receive requests for financial support. You might find this annoying. Please know that you, of course, are totally free to say ‘no’. Or ‘not yet.’ Or just to delete that email! We also know, based on historical experience, that some of you will, eventually, make UC Davis, and our department, a philanthropic priority. We benefit greatly from financial contributions from alumni. We believe in our missions of teaching, service, and research, and are interested in your partnership in these efforts in a variety of ways – including, if and when it’s appropriate for you, financial support of departmental or university activity that resonates with you personally.
Suggested First Steps on Your Alumni Journey

1. Register your personal email for alumni updates here.
2. Explore LinkedIn’s UC Davis Alumni Tool and connect with at least one alum.
3. Suggest an alumni event you would like us to host by emailing Professor Knox at [email protected] with the subject line ‘Suggested alumni event.’

We look forward to seeing how you continue your growth, establish careers, and contribute to our community. Remember, UC Davis and your fellow alumni are cheering for your success.
Congratulations!