President's Corner
Accreditation, to UW’s Credit
Greetings from your Alumni Association! Whether you graduated this past May, or are recently retired from a career started years ago at UW, welcome to the information source that serves all UW Alumni.
Just take a moment to recall your first day in Laramie. Were you a freshman at orientation with your parents? Were you at War Memorial Stadium watching the Pokes hand out some football lessons to those opponents brave enough to play football at 7200 feet? Can you still feel the jolt of the cannon when our Cowboys scored? I can still hear the cooks and their noisy pots in Washakie Center. Thanks are in order to my chemistry lab partner who was truly a wizard--I would have been lost without him. I recall cramming in Coe Library for biochemistry and walking across Prexy’s Pasture for the dreaded weekly exam. I recall praying for a blizzard so class would get cancelled! (Which never worked in my case….)
As your president, meeting UW alumni from across the United States has been truly rewarding. What fun it is to run into a fellow UW grad and share a connection to Laramie. What fun it is to be part of the UW Alumni Association and the scheduled events that we sponsor each year. Last fall at Homecoming I had the opportunity to meet those honored as the 2009 class of UW Distinguished Alumni. I can hardly wait to hear about the inspirational careers defining those selected for 2010. But honored or not, each of us have a unique story and special memories as a student at UW. Those short but memorable years spent at UW have become cornerstones for so many lives, mine included.
As alumni of the University of Wyoming, each of us is a stakeholder in UW. “Our mission is to foster a spirit of loyalty and fraternity among graduates and former students of UW and to promote the general welfare, development, achievement and honor of the University.” You can check out upcoming events on Facebook and Twitter, but the exciting news is coming the week of Homecoming October 2010. You will find our new alumni portal community, WyoAlumni, to be the information and communication tool you have been wishing for. It will be a one-stop shop to connect with UW and your alumni friends. It will have social networking and groups, an online alumni directory, a means to learn about, and sign up for, UW events, to work with career networking and services, refer a student, donate, and much more.
To realize your part of the benefits, you must keep us informed about address changes. Our new website and the alumni community portal make this important task painless, so don’t forget. Secondly, share your email address and get plugged in electronically. And third, get involved. Make sure to attend UWAA events as we come to your area.
Thanks to the dedication of our Executive Director Robbie Darnall and the hard work of the UWAA staff, outreach events are planned throughout the year to promote our University. Consider getting involved with our scholarship program that benefits so many worthy students. Remember when you were a freshman? Wouldn‘t it have been nice to have the Alumni Association in your corner?
Let me close with this thought. At the risk of sounding simple, those four years of study at the University of Wyoming have added immeasurably to my life’s opportunities. I am only one among the 105,000 UW Alumni stakeholders, but I believe we all share this same impact. For the next year I have the honor to serve with a great group of volunteers, your Board of Directors. Commonly we share a clear sense of duty, driven by what might have been had we not chosen the path and opportunity created by our years at Laramie.
Let us hear from you!
Larry Prager, UWAA President 2010-2011
