Kalamazoo College has launched a new networking platform that’s intended to connect students with K College alumni in their fields of interest. It's hosted on the site Alumnifire, which hosts several alumni networking sites for different colleges and universities — but developers of KConnect say it's a bit different.
Richard Sylvester is the assistant director of experiential opportunities at K College, who led the creation of the platform. He said it’s meant to connect current students with graduates rather than just being a space for alumni themselves.
“Students can reach out to alumni for both short-term mentoring, asking specific questions, but also just like general broad questions as well," Sylvester said.
KConnect can be used for direct messaging between students and alumni, but Sylvester said it can also be used to create groups and advertise career opportunities.
“There's also features in there for alumni to be able to post jobs and opportunities for students to apply to," Sylvester said. "One of the things we get pretty consistently is alumni reaching out to us saying 'hey, my company or I have an organization I know of, they're looking to hire.'"
Sylvester said the platform already has over 400 members, most of them graduates, but he says the college is hoping for more alumni to join in its initial phase to encourage student participation.
"In today's attention economy, if the students joined and they tried to search for an alumni in a specific field of interest or something but they don't find anybody, there's a good chance they will bounce off the platform and not come back," Sylvester said.
In hopes of preventing this, Sylvester said the team behind the platform is planning to wait a few weeks before officially launching to students. In an unscientific survey of students out and about on campus Tuesday, September 16, none had heard of the platform.
Michelle Fanroy graduated from K College in 1988 and now owns a consulting firm. She said she's excited that KConnect provides a way for alumni to give back to the college by paying it forward to current students.
"We all love K and any opportunity that we have to give back we want to do that," Fanroy said. "So if we sign up for something like KConnect, that means that we we actively want you [the students] to connect with us."
Fanroy said as a woman of color who attended K, it's important for her to know current students have opportunities to connect with alumni that might share their same interests and experiences.
"The demographics of K have shifted considerably in recent years, and so it's always great when students can see themselves in the alumni," Fanroy said.
Sylvester said the development team behind the platform had this in mind, and included the capability to create groups for people with similar interests and backgrounds to connect. He said the team also included features that let alumni control what they talk to students about and how often.
“Once they sign up they're able to not only select which services that they want to offer to students, they're also able to directly select how many times they want to be messaged by students. So they could say 'hey, I'm only available for three messages a month," Sylvester said. "At the end of the day, we know alumni are busy — they have jobs, they have families, they have kids."
K College graduates and current K students can join KConnect by visiting kzoo.alumnifire.com.
