On Thursday, Jan. 9, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., faculty in the Alumni Relations and College Counseling offices worked together to host a Young Alumni Luncheon for recent KO graduates. This event provided an opportunity for students from the classes of 2020 to 2024 to return to campus, where they saw the Community Commons construction, caught up with teachers, and reconnected with their high school peers.
Associate Director of Alumni and Parent Relations Frances Van Huystee Morris ’90 described the event as a way for alums to remain a part of KO’s community. “ Your whole life is here, and then you graduate, and it’s easy to feel like the school forgets about you because you’re not here all the time,” she said. “In the alumni office, our entire purpose is to make alumni feel like they still have a home at Kingswood Oxford.”
Although the goal was to bring back younger KO graduates, Mrs. Morris noted that she struggled to contact these more recent alums. In an effort to maintain positive relationships with students after they graduate from KO, the Alumni Office has worked to build a wider network where alumni of all ages can better connect with one another as well as the school. “ All seniors, before they graduate, create a profile on LinkedIn,” Mrs. Morris said. “We do that not just so that we can keep in touch with [alums], but so that they can keep in touch with one another to network and find jobs and internships.”
Another aspect of planning the event was finding a time and place that would suit as many alums’ schedules as possible. In the past, Young Alumni reunions have happened over Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks, but that required many alums to step away from family activities to return to KO. To solve this issue, the Alumni Office reworked the timing of the event this year to early January, rather than in the midst of holiday celebrations.
“ This is the first year we’ve tried this lunch,” Mrs. Morris said. “It was really convenient for our faculty to be able to pop in at lunch and see people who meant a lot to them.” Over the two hours the event was held, current KO teachers, students, and staff members dropped into the Black Box Bistro to catch up, providing a chance for the alums to reconnect not only with those in their graduating classes, but also with friends at the school.
Moving forward, the Alumni Relations team wants to stay in contact with Wyverns from the moment they graduate the school. Mrs. Morris described how a form filled out by KO seniors at their 100-day breakfast, an event marking 100 days until graduation, provides information like a personal email address that can be checked regularly. “We want to be able to keep in touch with you so you know about events that are happening,” she said. “If you go to school in Boston and I’m planning an event in Boston, you may want to come to that.”
Overall, the Young Alumni Luncheon was a great success and a tradition that the Alumni Relations office hopes to continue in the years to come. “ We rely very heavily on our past, on our traditions, and on the experiences of the people who came before,” Mrs. Morris said. “The only way we keep those traditions is if we keep the connections to our alumni.”
