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THE COLLEGE CONNECTION
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
THE COLLEGE CONNECTION
The Alumni Office additionally puts students in contact with
alumni through events such as the Dean’s Scholarship Reception
and the Columbia College Senior Dessert Reception. The former
gives scholarship recipients and scholarship donors (and/or their
representatives) the chance to meet. Sponsors learn about students’
paths to Columbia and lives at the College as well as their plans
for the future; students learn about donors’ experiences as undergraduates
and their professional endeavors. The latter, held for the
first time this spring, brought seniors together with members of
Columbia College Young Alumni to learn about the opportunities
to engage with the Columbia community after graduation, both in
NYC and through regional and international alumni clubs.
The Alumni Office also collaborates closely with Columbia
College Women, whose mission is to create networks within the
alumnae and student communities while building on the legacy
of women at the College. CCW’s flagship activity is its mentoring
program, begun in 1993, which connects alumnae with female
months later, during the send-off reception he hosted with his
wife, Anita Vela-Johnson ’83 Barnard, he made a point of collecting
their email addresses.
“I’d seen and interviewed dozens of students during the last
14 years but what I hadn’t done was make that connection afterward,”
says Salas, who also is president of the Columbia University
Club of San Antonio. “I thought, I don’t want to lose them
anymore — once you’re admitted, you’re [on your way toward
becoming] an alum, and part of the alumni network — and that’s
something I really want to develop going forward.”
While in NYC in October, Salas gathered the entire group for
dinner at V&T Pizzeria. “They’d never been,” he recalls with a
laugh. “I said, ‘How can you have been here for a semester and
not been’ So I got to introduce them to that. But what I really
wanted to know from them was, ‘How’s it going’”
Kelly Echevarria ’16 and Matthew Sheridan ’16E were among
the seven. “Simon was great at interacting with all of us on an
Addressing more broadly the value of students speaking one
on one with alumni, Salas says: “When you see an alum who
has been out of Columbia for five, 10, however many years, and
they’re successful and they have interesting jobs, you see the possibilities.
Yes, the alumni are emissaries [for the College] but it’s
more than that — it’s about showing here’s what life can be. You
can read about people’s accomplishments and that’s great, but
when you meet someone and talk to them, and they’re articulate
and accomplished, the student says, ‘That can be me.’”
Helping students to see a pathway — or rather, to see
many pathways — is a central goal of the career-oriented
programs that take place throughout the year.
These run the spectrum from large-room lectures, to
networking events, to small group dinners. While the backdrop
varies, alumni speakers often hew to the same model: They describe
their careers and the forces that shaped them, illuminate
advertising, newspapers and more.
Off-campus, two dozen students attended a CCE panel discussion
at Bloomberg headquarters in Midtown. Hosted by Janet
Lorin ’95, ’96J, the panelists included journalists John Brecher ’73;
Robert E. Friedman ’69, ’71 GSAS; Jared Sandberg ’90; and Nick
Summers ’05 (all of the panelists but Sandberg are former editorsin-chief
of Spectator). The panelists described their career paths,
stressing the value of a broad liberal arts education for journalists,
then answered students’ questions, staying afterward to chat
more casually with individual students.
Other destinations for CCE-sponsored site visits included
Bloomingdale’s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the headquarters
of Major League Baseball.
CCE’s Columbia Exploration Externship program, which
matches first-year students with alumni in an array of industries
for a three- to five-day job-shadowing experience during Spring
Break, also took place in March. Among this year’s participants
Elliot Sloane ’83 spoke with a group of students at a Dinner & Discussion Series event on March 4.
PHOTO: BRUCE GILBERT
undergraduates in one-on-one matches. This year, there were
175 matches. “The program is not meant for the students to find
a job,” says Michelle Estilo Kaiser ’87, ’97 P&S, co-chair of the
CCW Mentoring Committee, “although that’s first and foremost
on their minds. And certainly the relationship is different for everyone;
there’s chemistry involved. But we hope both parties get
something out of it that’s really valuable, even if it’s just one conversation
that sticks in their mind.”
For some students, relationships with alumni are forged even
before they begin their first year. Through the work of the Alumni
Representative Committee (ARC), many high school seniors
meet alumni during interviews, through welcome receptions for
accepted students or at send-off receptions for those who decide
to attend.
Simon Salas ’79, ’83L, ’83 SIPA, who chairs the San Antonio/
South Texas Valley region for ARC, had a particularly meaningful
experience last year. Of the eight students who attended his welcome
reception in Spring 2012, seven chose Columbia. Several
individual basis as well as in a group,” Echevarria says. “I could
tell that he was concerned that we were doing OK and getting
through freshman year. He called a few weeks later to check up
and to ask about others in the group … and asked us to make sure
they were doing OK. That’s what I really appreciated about him.”
Echevarria continues: “I love having the relationship with him
that I do. If ever I need anything, I can talk to him and he’s always
looking out for us. A lot of things at Columbia are stressful and
career-focused and everyone’s looking for alumni relationships
to get a job — but it’s nice to have this casual, general support
relationship, more of a family-type relationship than one that’s
based on getting ahead or getting into the job market.”
Sheridan echoes the sentiment: “It was cool to know that he was
looking after our well-being, and to be able to tell our friends, ‘Oh,
we’re going to meet ‘our alum.’ They all wished they had someone
like that from their cities. … Simon had given me advice not to sign
up for so many classes, which I’d ignored — and then got slammed
and had to drop one. But I was able to tell him, ‘You were right.’
(Left to right) Hooman Mehran ’86, Rick Wolf ’86 and Mark Berman ’86 proudly carry their class banner in this year’s Alumni Parade of
Classes at Class Day.
PHOTO: SUSAN COOK
what it means to work in their industry and field questions from
students on matters both professional and personal.
A survey of March and April alone illustrates the variety. The
CSA Talks series welcomed Li Lu ’96, ’96L, ’96 Business, a leader
of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and chairman and
founder of Himalaya Capital, and Jodi Kantor ’96, a New York Times
reporter and author of The Obamas. The Columbia College Dinner
& Discussion Series featured Elliot Sloane ’83, founder and CEO of
the communications firm Sloane & Company, and David Feith ’09,
an editor with The Wall Street Journal and chairman of Citizenship
First. And the Dean-in-Residence Dinner and Discussion Program
brought in actress and Barnard theatre professor Rita Pietropinto-
Kitt ’93, ’96 Arts; she spoke about breaking into show business as
well as her experiences with the Tony Award-winning play Next
to Normal, written by her husband, Tom Kitt ’96, and Brian Yorkey
’93. There also was a Media Networking Night, which allowed students
to chat with alumni who work in film, television, marketing,
were Shen Qiu ’16 and Albert Pan ’16, who worked with Venture
for America COO Eileen Lee ’05. (The nonprofit trains and places
top college graduates at start-ups around the country to give them
experience in the world of entrepreneurship.) The last day of their
externship coincided with an especially big day for VFA — the final
selection of its 2013 fellows — and Qiu and Pan were greeting
candidates, observing group interview sessions and taking photographs.
In the process, they’d read applications of many of the
fellowship candidates, themselves college seniors. Earlier in the
week, the two had, on their own initiative, conducted interviews
with nine of the 10 VFA staff members to learn more about their
backgrounds as well as their positions with the company.
Reflecting on the externship, Pan says, “I had a lot of upperclassmen
telling me, this is what you have to do to get into investment
banking, and I was pretty set to do all the steps. But now it
got me thinking about all the diverse possibilities — like during
my summers I don’t have to intern at a bank … Talking to a lot
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