F.Y.I.
What's RAC?
By Lory Hough
At first, it was just happy hour. A handful of recent alumni living in New York, eager to catch up with other recent graduates, would get together every few months. It was informal and small — half a dozen to a dozen people each time. Eventually, word got around.
“The number of alums on the e-mail distribution list kept growing as people recommended friends to be added,” says Elizabeth Guinan, Ed.M.’06, the happy hour organizer. Kameka Dempsey, Ed.M.’05, heard about the gatherings through Pat Purcell, Ed.M.’05, whom she met at a career days event at the Harvard Club.
Eventually, with help from the Ed School’s Alumni Relations Office, Guinan, Dempsey, and a handful of other New York City–based alumni decided to make the get-togethers more organized: they formed a Recent Alumni Circle group, known as RAC. A newly created partnership between the alumni office and the Annual Fund, RACs are regional groups that help strengthen the tie between the Ed School and recent graduates, help increase alumni participation in the Annual Fund, and help recent graduates connect with one another. The first RAC started in Boston three years ago; the New York group formed last summer.
Dempsey, a project director for Duke Corporate Education, says she was drawn to the RAC because it offered a concrete way to stay in touch with former classmates.
“For most alums, initially getting involved is driven by knowing that you’ll have a chance to reconnect with other classmates that perhaps you don’t see regularly or perhaps may not be connected to,” she says. “It’s often hard to catch up with people individually when faced with the demands of our careers and personal lives.”
Guinan says being involved with the RAC is also a good way for recent graduates to network. For this reason, Guinan, a director with the New York City Department of Education, says she would love for the NYC RAC to hold more events each year — one largescale gathering, as well as smaller quarterly social get-togethers. Dempsey wants community service opportunities added to the roster.
If you have ideas for the New York City RAC (or the Boston RAC), or if you are a recent graduate in the Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., areas and are interested in talking to us about RAC programs, please send an e-mail to rac@gse.harvard.edu.
