We now have a website and a Facebook page, and are adding the option to pay membership via PayPal. We still don't have a lot of members who are less than 75 years old. I have been the outreach coordinator, in charge of trying to bring younger people in, as our membership is declining due to natural attrition.
Now I am the vice-president, and my goal is to figure out where we should go next if we can't get new members. One of our primary functions is to administer a couple of endowments that we use for scholarships. It's a lot of money, and will likely outlast us. We would like to do more, though, but we lack the membership. If we had more people we could set up mentorships for our students, have workshops on job skills, participate in skills labs, and so on. I'm not sure how to get our former students interested in doing that.
I wonder if things like alumni associations are a thing of the past, and not relevant now.
Anyway, it was a nice lunch. The food was surprisingly good for a catered affair. Our current students acted as volunteers. One of my incoming students was one of the scholarship recipients and I got a chance to chat with him a bit.
Two of my former teachers, Vivian and Cathy. Vivian was my first semester teacher, and Cathy was my 4th semester teacher. I learned a lot from both. Cathy is one of my role models for how I teach the 4th semester. She knew how to step back and give us the freedom to learn and figure it out. I try to do the same. It was so good to see them!
