On Nov. 29 2021, Penn State Global Alumni Engagement hosted our last biweekly meeting for Fall 2021. The purposes of the meeting were to discuss on matters reflecting the upcoming events (i.e. Giving Tuesday and luncheon at India Pavilion) and also SAGA new updates such as alumni responses to interviews, social media updates, and finally, to celebrate our graduating SAGA members. The meeting was held at Room 410 Boucke Building from 4.30p.m. to 5.30p.m. and 18 members were present.
The meeting began with a mini ice-breaking game led by Afiqah. All SAGA members were given 2 minutes to find common things they share with their assigned partners. Rachel and Vanshika got 9 points, making them the winner of the ice-breaking game. All of the SAGA members were seen to be more comfortable with each other after the game ended.
The meeting was continued with an award session to the Top 5 SAGA members who were able to reach out to their alumni the most. The winners of the week were Ronnie, Hamza, Maggie and Rachel. Hamza, the meeting host, began a brief session for the Top 5 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 think it’s good to reach out to them even if they don’t respond as it’ll help them feel connected to Penn State even after they had graduated.”
-Hamza-
“The alumni were open to share their experiences but not too much when it comes to detailed information.”
-Rachel-
Dr. Anna concluded the discussion by mentioning how it is okay if the alumni choose not to share their personal information. As SAGA members, we can also ask alumni if they would like to be featured on our Weekly Global Alumni Spotlight column on our blog. It will help boost their career and also have them recognized and celebrated as our Penn State alumni.
The next agenda of the meeting was for the SAGA updates. Afiqah presented the finalized logo which will be used on the SAGA business card. We later moved on to the GivingTuesday agenda where Dr. Anna presented the current donation that was raised up until Nov. 29. She encouraged all SAGA members to go all out in promoting the Giving Tuesday to our global community as tomorrow (Nov. 30) would mark the end of GivingTuesday. The last discussion in the meeting was about social media updates presented by Jeff, Hamza, Vanshika and Afiqah. A lot of improvement has been done on WeChat and the SAGA blog. Jeff announced that the the WeChat group now has 1,398 followers while Afiqah presented the new YouTube channel that she created for SAGA. Hamza and Vanshika also reminded all SAGA members to join the LinkedIn group as it currently has only 15 members. We then wrapped up the meeting with reminders of the upcoming luncheon at India Pavilion which will be held on Dec. 3.
Right after we finished our formal discussion, Dr. Anna brought up a gift to celebrate Jiayuan (Anna) Shen and Shixiang (Rachel) Yuan who will be graduating this semester. They both gave a short speech and later led the “Expand Horizons” cheers. We then ended our meeting and ate JJ’s sandwich. Overall, the meeting went as well as expected.
Expand Horizons!
Author: Afiqah Razak