Alumni Association offers perks for grads
The USU Alumni Association was founded in 1898, 10 years after the Agricultural College of Utah – today Utah State University – was founded. In its more than 100 years of service, the Alumni Association has kept former USU students connected long after they graduate.
Today, the Alumni Association continues to provide services for all USU alumni, regardless of age or membership status, said Brandon Taylor, membership and marketing coordinator for the association.
“The mission of the Alumni Association is to enhance the USU experience through lifelong engagement,” he said. “That can be in a number of different ways, and to do we provide a number of different types of services to our alumni.”
Taylor said the association offers two types of memberships – the annual membership, which costs $35 a year, and the lifetime membership, which can cost up to $500 a year depending on whether the plan is purchased jointly with a spouse.
Taylor said the lifetime membership is the better buy because it is a one-time payment, whereas the annual memberships must be renewed each year.
“You can do it a number of different ways,” Taylor said. “We have payment plans for the lifetime ones. A lot of people just do payroll deductions or pay $100 a year, and then when that’s paid off you’re considered a lifetime member. It’s actually less expensive over time to do that then buy the annual membership every year over.”
Benefits and services for USU alumni, regardless of membership in the Association or not, include auto and home insurance, short, comprehensive, and long-term health insurance, floral services, discounts on HP products and access to the Merrill-Cazier Library, according to the alumni association’s website.
When becoming a member of the association, alumni can access a wider range of benefits, such as travel, lodging, shopping and business discounts, reduced-price tickets to Aggie sporting events, and discounts for renting out the Dwight B. Haight Alumni Center on campus for events and weddings.
Taylor said starting in July the association will be offering new programs to members and non-members.
“One benefit in particular we are really excited about is our career program,” he said. “We’ve actually teamed up with USU Career Services to offer a lot of the resources they do but tailored more toward alumni.”
The association will be offering networking events, video training and career development services. They will also offer a number of services USU Career Services provides for students, such as career exploration tools, interview techniques, resume building and cover letter writing skills. These are for new graduates going out into the workforce and those who may have lost a job after 20 years, Taylor said .
Patty Halaufia, executive director of the Alumni Association, said the association does its best to get feedback on what services alumni want or consider practical.
“Over this past year we’ve been doing some strategic planning for the Alumni Association and we’ve been asking ourselves about what we’ve been doing for the past 17 years,” said Halaufia. “Is it still relevant? Are we providing the services alumni need? We get information from over 2,000 alumni on different ideas and the direction we need to go.”
Taylor said discounted flower delivery service was an example of a service alumni felt unnecessary.
“One of our vendors right now is a floral company,” she said. “They’re not a local one but they deliver nationally, and they work with other alumni organizations. When we interviewed our alumni, that wasn’t something they really cared about. If they wanted flowers, they could probably get them cheaper locally.That wasn’t something we could really use as value added to a membership.”
Halaufia said the Alumni Association has something for everyone.
“I think if the students will not think of us as only old people as alumni but all of us who graduated from Utah State as an alumni, young and old,” she said. “We want to be involved with them throughout their lives, share their successes and provide opportunities to stay involved with the university over the years. That’s what we’re here to do – to make a lifelong connection with our alumni.”
– ej.jungblut@aggiemail.usu.edu