A coordinated effort aimed at strengthening the ties between students and alumni is currently underway.
With the help of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, Career Services, and the Alumni Association, the objective is to pair students with alumni who share their interests.
According to TCU Senate President Mitch Robinson, the initiative came in response to student interest and was discussed when this year's senators were running for office last spring.
"One of the things that students were talking about a lot is the need to have a closer relationship with alumni," he said.
In the proposed program, which will be optional, students will be paired with alumni based on a number of factors that include profession, geography, and major. The pairings will likely come after the students declare a major.
According to Tufts Alumni Association President Sunny Breed (J '66), the alumni will play an advisory role for the students and can provide information about the professions in which they are involved.
"The whole idea behind the mentoring program is for students to be paired with people who are working in the field that the students are interested in," she said.
"The alum would then be a resource on possible grad school programs, possibly [about] internships, [and] information about the field."
The program, which is still in the planning phase and will likely be unveiled in a pilot program late next semester or early next year, will build upon existing resources.
"We're trying to improve some of the things that are already in place through Career Services," freshman TCU Senator Duncan Pickard said.
Pickard serves on the Administration and Policy Committee, which together with the Education Committee is spearheading the efforts to promote the plan in the Senate.
The main mechanism currently in place through Career Services is the Tufts Career Network.
According to Brian McCarthy, the chair of the Alumni Association's Career Services Committee, students can currently access the network to search for and contact alumni in fields they're interested in.
Despite its availability, he said that many students are presently unaware of this resource.
"I think a lot of students don't realize that option currently exists, and one of the things that we're exploring is how to get the word out better on that," he said.
A related problem, according to Robinson, is that many students find the alumni and career services networks to be confusing.
"A lot of students feel that the career network and the alumni network are hard to navigate through," he said.
According to Breed, many alumni are willing to fix that problem.
"I think the alumni are very interested in working with students, in offering whatever they can to students," she said.
Pickard said that this commitment from alumni has the same core objective as the current Capital Campaign, which was announced earlier this month.
"We're trying to get alumni more involved with the students and the campus in general. This is a great way to do that," he said.
"There are benefits to the alumni, benefits to the students, benefits to the University as a whole."
The program will also help show current students the importance of becoming active as alumni, according to McCarthy.
"Current students are future alums, so whatever we can do to build the bond between alums and current students just helps keep the cycle going," he said.
The TCU Senate is working to shore up support from Career Services and from alumni, Pickard said, and at the earliest the program will begin in a pilot form is the end of next semester.
He said that initially it might target smaller departments, such as the Communications and Media Studies Program.
Such programs are often tailored specifically to certain career fields, he said, making it easy to find alumni matches for students.
McCarthy emphasized the need to start slowly when building up the program.
"We might have to walk first before we can run," he said. "[Right now] we're trying to figure out how to walk."
