Rutgers Alumni Federation Regional
Leaders Conference
Lana Sternberg, Lou Trygar, and Steve & Cynde Magidson attending for RCSC
INTRODUCTION
This year’s Conference was attended by 23 reps from the following 11 Regional Clubs:
Central Florida, Dallas/Ft. Worth, New England, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond,
Sarasota/Manatee, South Carolina, Southern California, Tampa Bay, and Washington,
DC. For those of us from Southern California, Carol & Bob Nace and Tom O’Connor
were familiar faces in attendance.
Between Thursday and Saturday, there were 9 separate sessions covering the following
topics.
1. New & Improved Club Leadership Manual
2. Communicating with your alumni
3. Show & Tell: Single greatest, most creative, or most challenging
idea your Club has to offer
4. Taking it to the next level – Setting Goals for your Club
5. New Alumni Database
6. Website Resources
7. Creating the Future Today – Rutgers Campaign
8. Open Discussion
9. Admissions Information
In addition there was an arrival dinner where Michael Gallo, Professor of Environmental
and Community Medicine at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Director of
the NIH Center of Excellence, and Associate Director of the Cancer Institute of NJ spoke
to us about the growth of the Busch campus. .
We also were able to attend the Coach’s Huddle Luncheon held at the Hale Center
adjacent to the Stadium on Thursday where head football coach Greg Schiano was a
very informative speaker.
In attendance from the University were:

Mike Carroll VP Alumni Relations, Exec. Dir. RU Foundation

Dick Lloyd
Asst. VP of Alumni Relations

Bob Marguccio former Director Alumni Relations

Sharon Cocuzza
Director Alumni Relations & RCSC’s main contact

Carey Loch
Alumni Relations Officer

Keri DeMayo Alumni Relations Officer

Dawn Kanaan Director, Regional Campaign

Nancy Pullen Office of Admissions

Allison Poli
RCSC’s contact for recruiting
SESSION 1: CLUB LEADERSHIP
MANUAL – CAREY LOCH
There are 22 active regional Clubs and the number is growing. The Leadership
manual is being revised into a loose-leaf format to allow for faster and easier
updates. It will set the guidelines for those of us involved in running (or starting) a
Regional Club. Some of the things discussed…


The Rutgers Alumni Federation (RAF), which acts as an umbrella to the 18
various college alumni associations at the University, would like the Regional
Clubs to work on the same fiscal year as the University. The advantage for
the Clubs is that they would be under the University’s tax reporting scheme
and not have to file their own tax returns. RCSC currently operates from Sept
1 through Aug 31. We would have to change to a July 1-June 30 fiscal year.
The Club needs to provide to the Alumni Federation office a list of officers
every 3 months.
SESSION 2: COMMUNICATING
WITH YOUR ALUMNI
George Rears, a fellow Alum and volunteer, spoke to the group about the benefits of
email list servers and websites. Thanks to Jonathan Ho and Julia Bogdan, our Club was
ahead of the game in both of these areas and we were able to share some of our
experiences with other Clubs just getting started.
Newsletters were discussed, as well. The NY Club has just sent its first newsletter out to
its 10,000 alumni. It was professionally designed and beautifully laid out. Their cost is
$250 per issue for the design layout plus about $3,000 to mail it. Printing costs were not
available but it is a two-color piece so it is not cheap. It was interesting to hear that with
their mailing, they got about 100 members to join the Club.
SESSION 3: SHOW AND TELL –
THE SINGLE GREATEST, MOST
CREATIVE, OR MOST
CHALLENGING IDEA YOUR
CLUB HAS TO OFFER
Each of the Clubs discussed various ideas their Clubs had implemented. Clubs
discussed such things as monthly luncheons with speakers, quarterly newsletters,
student send-off parties, and other events. The Richmond club has gotten a VA
vanity license plate with the Scarlet Knight on it. Too bad we cannot do this in
California (ed. note: it takes the state legislature to approve any new plate designs).
Our Club’s topic was our early decision (18 years ago) to implement our own
database. With this we could keep track of our members from year to year, which
events they attended, and their interests. This has enabled us through the years to
target our event mailings to include more than just our dues-payers, tailored to the
location, the interest, and/or whether or not someone has attended a similar event
before. We can also mail renewal reminders out to those who have been members in
past years. It is the database that enables us to create our successful Membership
Directory.
The DC Club has been very successful with its student intern program and pointed
us to the Rutgers Career Services website
http://careers.Rutgers.edu/alumni/main.asp. Click on SEARCH and enter “henry” as
the password. If you forget this, go to the www.Rutgers.edu site, select Alumni then
wait a bit for the box “Career Services” to appear at the top. Click on it and follow
the directions.
SESSION 4: TAKING IT TO THE
NEXT LEVEL
In smaller breakout groups the Clubs discussed the top 3 or 4 goals for the coming
year. Our Club agreed on the following:
1. Grow the membership (which has been running about 160-180 per year) and
the number of working members (at about 17 now). To do this we need to
find the newcomers, get new/younger alums involved, and keep our past
officers involved.
2. Grow the Club’s Scholarship Endowment to $50,000 (currently at about
$35K).
3. Start a Career Services program.
4. Grow our community outreach programs.



We need to get updates from the University every 3-6 months of alums newly
moved into our region. We can market to them before they become entrenched
in other activities.
Sharon Cocuzza suggested she send us news about the University to share with
our members before any of our events.
We need a way to locate “famous” alums that would be willing to speak at our
brunches and other events.
SESSION 5: NEW ALUMNI
DATABASE – RADAR
Terry Callahan, Glenn Sandberg (Mgr., Alumni Records), and Lisa Leonard (Bus. Sys.
Analyst) talked to us about RADAR, the new University database which currently has
over 315,000 alums in it. About 35,000 are dues payers in one of the 18 various
schools’ Alumni Associations. The new database will enable the University to better
track its alums and provide info back to the regional clubs.
SESSION 6: WEB RESOURCES
Online Community:
In addition to RADAR, (for which access is
restricted to selected RU employees), there is
a database for us alumni to use. Dave Pickens
(Mgr. of Membership) told us about the new
Online Community Database. All you need to
register for it is your student identifier that is
on the various colleges’ alumni association
cards and periodicals. (There is a way to ask
for your student ID online if you cannot find
it.) Once you are registered, you then can gain
access with just your user name. From the
Rutgers home page, click on Alumni then on
the box in the upper right of the screen “On
line Community” to find this. Once registered
you can check your own record and look for
old friends or search for others in your area.
Permanent Rutgers email address:
Once you are registered you can select a
permanent Rutgers email address that you
forward to your current email address. This
way, should you decide to change your
email/internet service provider in the future,
you won’t have to change your email address
to the outside world – you’ll just forward your
RU email address to your new provider.
Alumni Career Network:
Marsha Milgrom (Counselor for Career
Services) demonstrated the Career Services
website. From the University Home page, click
on Alumni, then on the Career Services box.
Alums are encouraged to register online for
career mentoring. Students and other alums
looking for someone with whom to discuss
their potential career paths can browse online,
searching by career, by major, or by location.
Sept 11 Memorial Scholarships:
The University has established the September
11 Memorial Scholarships for the dependent
children of NJ residents who lost their lives in
the Sept. 11th attacks. For details log on to the
web at http://www.support.rutgers.edu and
click on the American Flag.
SESSION 7: THE RUTGERS
CAMPAIGN
Mike Carroll (VP of Development and Alumni Relations) and Dawn Kanaan (Mgr.
Regional Campaign) spoke to us about the University’s current campaign to raise
$500 million over a 6 year period, which begun July 1998. To date $342 million has
been raised and contributions such as those in our RCSC Scholarship Endowment
count towards the $500 million goal. This campaign will be publicly launched next
June.
SESSION 8: OPEN DISCUSSION
SESSION
Dick Lloyd led a discussion over lunch regarding the Alumni Associations of the 18
various schools/colleges vs the Regional Alumni Associations. Our respective
members are often confused. For example, they “join” the RC, Livingston, or
Camden Alumni Associations then get hit for dues from Regional Clubs such as ours.
Many universities allocate a portion of the alumni dues back to the regions. Why
can’t we? Mostly the reason is that the Alumni Assns are independent of each other –
they are not one alumni association under the Rutgers Alumni Federation. Getting
them all to agree has not yet occurred.
SESSION 9: RECRUITMENT AND
ADMISSIONS
Nancy Pullen (Associate Director of Admissions and cousin of local alum Debra
Westerberg) and Allison Poli (Admissions Counselor) hosted our session on
Admissions and the new web site. Undergrad admissions are strong at the
University. We have 50,350 total enrollment – the highest ever! About 35,000 are on
the New Brunswick campuses. 29,163 people applied (undergrad) for admission this
year – the highest ever and about 14,000 were admitted, and 6,789 were enrolled
(first year, or “freshmen” to most of us!) and 9,778 total new students across all of
the colleges.
This year’s students had an overall increase on SAT’s of 19 points from last year.
(While SATs are not the only factor in admission, and the University does not
actually publish the average SAT anymore, we understand that it is close to 1200.)
The applications come in from every state and from over 100 countries. India is the
#1 foreign country, followed by Korea, China, Pakistan and Taiwan. RU is in the top
25 of International Admissions and we do this with no “incentives” to come here.
After NJ, the next highest admissions come from NY, PA, MD, CT, MA, VA, CA, FL,
and IL.
The total cost of attendance for an out of state student at Rutgers this year is
$18,536 There is a “National Scholarship” of $5,000 (renewable each year), available
for out of state students who are in the top 10% of their class with an SAT of 1250
or higher. This is an automatic scholarship awarded to all who meet the
qualifications. In 1999, 37 students qualified; in 2000 there were 97! We’re up to
about 300 now! This is a powerful message for those of us working the College Fairs.
Available to Afro-American or Puerto Rican students who are in the top 20% of their
class with SATs of 1150 or higher is the $10,000 Carr scholarship.
The Admissions web site is a plethora of information. Visit it at www.
Admissions.Rutgers.edu (or from the home page click on admissions).
RCSC Recruiting came highly praised by the Admissions office. Sydnee Breuer is our
liaison with Admissions and is doing a fine job.
After our final session with Admissions on Saturday, we headed out for a fun
afternoon at the Stadium for Homecoming festivities and our victory over Navy!