Spring 2013 Alumni Council Meeting
Guest post by David Holden (’99)
Friday, April 19 – Saturday, April 20, the Alumni Council gathered for their Spring meeting. David Holden shares his thoughts on the meeting with his college friends, and has allowed us to make them available to the greater Wake Forest community. Enjoy!
Hello Friends,
I recently attended the Alumni Council meeting at Wake and thought you might be interested in a few highlights from the meeting:
1. Online learning. Despite the trend towards online courses, Wake continues to believe there will always be a place for the residential college experience. The aim is to become the premier face-to-face college experience and to make sure we give our students skills that employers value. Even with the tough job market young people face today, 95% of our May 2012 graduates were employed or in graduate school after 6 months. More information is on the Office of Personal & Career Development website.
2. Student-athlete initiative. There is a new program at Wake currently in the experimental phase. It is designed to put student-athletes and regular students together in a summer program to enhance their relationships with each other.
3. Buying the Joel. Wake is in negotiations to purchase the Joel from the City of Winston-Salem and hopes to close July 1. We need to make the place ours and take it over for a better home court advantage. Anyone against more basketball wins?
4. Popular majors. The three most popular majors within Wake Forest College are: (1) Political Science, (2) Communications, (3) Psychology. For minors it is: (1) Entrepreneurship, (2) Spanish, (3) Psychology.
5. Admissions. Interesting facts regarding enrollment: School we most often lose students to is UNC-Chapel Hill, due to cost. School we most often win students from is the University of Richmond, due to our higher ranking. Schools we are most 50/50 with are Emory and Vanderbilt.
6. Alumni Giving. There has been a two-year downward trend in number of alumni that contribute financially to the school. This has hurt our US News and World Report rankings. If you have not made a gift for the current fiscal year ending June 30th, please consider at least a $25 gift: http://giving.wfu.edu/.
7. Construction. The new Business School (Farrell Hall), the new dining hall, and the two, new huge dorms should be complete and open this fall. All freshmen now live on South Campus. These new dorms are on North Campus. With the new three-year residency requirement, this equates to 480 more junior students living on campus.
8. Enrollment numbers. There are no current plans to increase enrollment above 4,800. It has steadily increased over the years and is currently slightly under 4,800.
9. Mini-MOOC for Wake Foresters. The Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake offered a lifelong-learning online class for the Wake Forest community called ZSRx: The Cure for the Common Web. It is basically internet user education for everyone and was a huge success. 713 registrants have completed some or all of the four-week course so far. What’s nice is that you can complete as much or as little of the courses as you like. Be on the lookout for two new courses related to Genealogy and Healthy Living.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Go Deacs!