We’re almost done with the bachelor studies and we keep thinking every day about what will happen after we graduate. Some of us feel bad when we think that we might never see our beloved colleagues. This has been the case in many developed countries. That’s why they have found a solution which is called Alumni. The question is: Does SEEU have an Alumni and how does it work?

In a few words, Alumni means a graduate of a school, college or university. Every former student can join the Alumni of the university. It is a great way to stay in touch with your ex colleagues. This association is used widely in the USA and the UK among the universities. The alumni can be organized within a single department, faculty or the entire university. It depends from the number of students and their cooperation.

Alumni associations can be used for many different things. It was basically created to do one thing. Get former colleagues together and let them have some fun together. The modern countries usually have most of its students from different places; this is gradually being transformed even in our university. After graduation students went back home and started working. They could never see their old friends anymore except for some rare cases. So, the alumni helped them to rejoin again and share their experience. The job of the alumni is to keep track of its members and organize events once in a while. This will allow the former students to remember the time of graduation. Most of the cases, while chatting among each other, they come up with ideas that help them to cooperate and make more money together. This is one other way of alumni help. The alumni searches for new job postings and informs the members that are in a need for a job. Also the university has plenty of gain from the alumni even though alumni don’t work within the university as a part of the organization. The university can use it as a marketing tool to promote possible future career positions. It shows the prospect students that this university has produced students that now hold high job positions. This increases the standard of the university.

There are plenty of other usages of alumni association. But, we still haven’t answered the question asked before: Does SEEU have Alumni and how does it work? – The answer is yes. It is called SEE University Alumni. It was created during the Career Fair in 2006 as a constituency society to help the University and the graduated to feel proud. The first members were different cities and the idea came from the cooperation between SEEU and Indiana University. These were volunteers from the Career Center that were hired very soon after they graduated. Some of the members of the initiative committee for forming Alumni association were: Narcise Ibrahimi, Ismail Luma, Teuta Neziri, Hidajete Zeqiri, Armir Ramadani, Drilon Iseni etc. The Career Center had the support from the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) project. The first generation of the alumni had a tough job on organizing and planning the future work. There has been a tremendous support from the university. They had a vision of making this association and matching the standards of the modern world. Some of the tasks of the Alumni are to inform its members for internships or job offers, promoting the Alumni, organizing meetings and enhancing discussions. Minister for Foreign Investment Gligor Tashkovich, was one of the people that congratulated the work of the Alumni and emphasized its importance, its experience as Cornell University alumnus.

We should be grateful to them for making the first step and making it easier for the generations that will follow. However, they didn’t create this association to be satisfied with the current achievements. They have short-term and long-term objectives. The idea is to create some other departments spread in other cities that would work within the Alumni. There has been a discussion with the University for new strategies that would support the final objective which is to transform the Alumni association into a fund raising organization of the university. However, we should be the ones that will try to bring something positive to it and make useful changes that will help us all afterwards. There is a need for a new software and website that would allow members to register online and also share their opinions with each other. This is discussed with the academic staff in order to allow students to get involved with these issues. We hope that after reading all this there will be a better understanding of the Alumni. We as future graduated students should realize the importance of this association and keep in track with their work. It should be kept in mind that long-term goals are more important and the Alumni will give us many benefits afterwards. “Get your chance” is the slogan of the Alumni and clearly shows that we should be the ones to show interest in our future and Alumni is a synonym for future success.