Transitional representatives elected to Alumni Council

The Class of 2003 elected four Transitional Representatives to the Alumni Council on May 1 from a pool of 14 candidates.

The four seniors elected - Alison Clarke, David Michaels, Sarah Stroback, and Benjamin Lee - were elected from the largest pool of candidates since the program began in 2000. Each will serve a five-year term as members of the Tufts Alumni Council, which is the governing board of the Tufts Alumni Association. Each of the 14 candidates was nominated by a fellow member of the Class of 2003.

Council members are nominated from among alumni and voted on by the Association. At the end of their five-year term, transitional representatives are eligible to run for a full council membership, which lasts ten years.

The Transitional Representative system was created for the Class of 2000 in an effort to better connect younger alumni to the University. Although the "[previous] system produced excellent leadership for the Association for many years," Alumni Association President Alan MacDougall said, "the Association found that the Council's two hundred members did not contain enough younger alumni."

The creation of the positions was part of a concerted effort by the Association to promote the involvement of younger alumni, which included the founding of the Young Alumni Achievement Award. The award honors a recently graduated alumnus who has made significant accomplishments in his or her career since graduation.

The Alumni Association also reaches out to younger alumni in other, less conventional ways. "I helped a graduate of the class of 2002 in his job search. He is now helping a current sophomore in his search for a summer internship," MacDougall said. "Tufts is a family, and that is the way a family behaves."

MacDougall believes the program has been a success. "The Transitional members have been such outstanding people that I know that their classes have a sense of connection which was not felt by previous classes in their early years after graduation," he said. Transitional members have taken leadership positions, serving as chairs of Council committees and leading regional chapters of the Association in both Philadelphia and Baltimore.

While fundraising is not a direct goal of this program, MacDougall did point out that "it is essential to the future well-being of the University that our alumni have a consistent habit of giving." MacDougall suggested the more connection young alumni feel to the University, the greater the chance they will donate earlier.

All four elected members for the Class of 2003 expressed a strong desire to stay linked to the University. "I decided to run because I have loved my time at Tufts and do not want my connection to the University to end with graduation," Michaels said.

Clarke pointed out that "there are a lot of changes for the better that Tufts can make and alumni involvement is key for many of these changes." Clarke, along with Ben Lee, plans to start an insurance plan for Tufts Alumni.

MacDougall has high hopes for the Class of 2003. "I know that the four members who were elected will serve the University and the Association in key leadership posts, but I also know that the other nominees and other members of the class of 2003 will fill key posts in the next few years," he said.