On January 25 2022, Penn State Global Alumni Engagement hosted our second biweekly meeting for 2022. The purposes of the meeting were to welcome our 23 new SAGA members, discuss on matters regarding the new grouping strategy, upcoming Global Career Workshop, SAGA new updates such as alumni responses to interviews, social media updates, distribute SAGA sweatshirts and finally, to celebrate the birthdays of our SAGA members. The meeting was held at Room 410 Boucke Building from 4.30p.m. to 6.00p.m. and 39 members were present.
The meeting began with a brief introduction from all SAGA members who were present. The event was followed by a more thorough introduction from the new SAGA members. They were all very active in participating as they had no problem in raising hands and volunteering when asked for assistance.
We later moved on to our second agenda where Dr. Anna presented the new meeting format where all SAGA members will be divided into 5 different groups. The groups will be randomly assigned and the list will be announced some time in the week of Jan. 25. 11 SAGA members also volunteered to be the leaders of the groups. In the upcoming meetings, a group will be chosen to share their tips or experience in reaching out to their alumni. The group will also has to recommend one alumni to be featured on the Global Alumni Spotlight. Dr. Anna also mentioned that by the end of the semester, the group that is able to reach out to the highest amount of alumni will receive an award. Not only that, students who are able to reach out to 12 alumni will also be rewarded with a laptop bag. With this new incentive, we really hope it can widen our horizons and strengthen our relationship within the SAGA members.
The meeting was continued with a panel session to the Top 4 SAGA members who were able to reach out to their alumni the most. Panelists include Eden(13), Vanshika(5), Alisia(1),and Jackie(1). Dr. Anna began a brief session for them to share their advice and tips on how they were able to reach out to their alumni. Some of the experiences shared were as below:
“I just went to the LinkedIn search engine. I put in Ethiopia and all of Penn State’s alumni appeared on the screen.”
-Eden-
“I mostly connect with my alumni through Facebook.”
-Alisia-
Dr. Anna concluded the discussion by mentioning how there are various social media platforms we can use to reach out to our alumni. We should be smart in utilizing them and always be reminded to approach them politely. Eden was then rewarded with a laptop bag as she managed to reach out to more than 12 alumni.
The next agenda of the meeting was for the SAGA updates. Alisia explained briefly on how the Global Alumni Spotlight works. As mentioned before, in each meeting, a group will have to suggest one of their alumni to be featured on our blog. Jeff then told the new SAGA members to check their business cards for any corrections.
In between discussions, we also had a chance to sing Happy Birthday for the January birth-month SAGAs (Nina, Namkyu, Giselle, Stephanie, Cristina and Yifan) . We then continued with the social media updates where Afiqah presented the latest SAGA members for Spring 2022 post. Other than that, Jeff promoted the WeChat group which has now had more than 1,500 followers. Towards the end of the discussion, Dr. Anna mentioned about the upcoming Global Career Workshop and volunteers will be needed to assist the event. Multiple hands were raised and Alisia jotted down the names of the volunteers. Dr. Anna also reminded everyone to join the ongoing video competition. Afiqah then showed them an example of the video submission (credits to Yifan).
The last discussion in the meeting was about a reminder of the important dates which is included below:
-
- Biweekly meetings
- Next Meeting: Monday, February 7, 2022, 4.30-6.00pm
- Other: February 21; March 21; April 4 & 18
- Global Career Workshop
- February 25, 3.00-5.00pm
- SAGA Award Ceremony
- Thursday, April 28, 11.30am-1.30pm in HUB Heritage Hall
- Biweekly meetings
Before we ended our meeting, Hamza led our “Expand Horizons” motto cheers. Everyone then collected their own sweatshirt and ate the provided dinner from Penn Kebab. The meeting was adjourned at 6.00pm. Overall, the meeting went as well as expected.
Expand Horizons!
Author: Afiqah Razak