How much orange is too much orange?

This week, Barnard’s SGA welcomed not one, not two, but three administrative guests. This is by far (well, by one) the largest number of administrative guests at a single this meeting this year. So what happened at this star-studded meeting of the Rep Council? Read on to find out.

Louise Hood, Associate Vice President and Chief of Staff for Development, Alumnae Affairs, and Career Development; Caitilin Tramel, Executive Director for Alumnae Relations; and Robert Earl, Director of Career Development joined SGA in the Diana Cafe to talk about alumnae, careers, and how they go together.

Hood started by describing the logical relationship between alumnae relations and career development. Alumnae serve as mentors to Barnard students in their search for careers, and some are also in recruiting and hiring positions. Encouraging institutional affinity helps students progress in their chosen paths and allows alumnae to a chance to give back.

Tramel followed Hood, and described her position in encouraging alumnae relations. Barnard has over 35,000 alumnae spanning decades, who live across the globe and are in different stages of life. The different alumnae create groups and committees according to their interests, careers, or graduating years. Of special note was “Project Continuum,” which unfortunately doesn’t have anything to do with the bending of space-time, as the name suggests, but is composed of alumnae who graduated thirty or more years ago and maintain active communication and frequent programming. Someday you too may be able to tour Monet’s Garden or present a century of wisdom with your alumnae retiree peers. The Barnard alumnae association also maintains an active directory and listserv that allows members to keep in touch.

Earl spoke last, and discussed the Career Development’s current efforts, including the alumnae mentorship program and recent efforts to connect with the tech industry. He also fielded some hard hitting questions from SGA members. Rep for Equity and Inclusion Hannah Seymour summed up what we were all thinking about Barnard’s job posting website by remarking that “Nacelink is very unhelpful.” Snaps of agreement were heard all around, and Earl wants us all to know that the website, which is known to have wrong, dated, or inconsistent information, went through improvements over the summer, and now can be accessed on mobile devices.

Seymour also expressed concern over the lack of access Barnard students have to certain career events at Columbia, especially for those in the maths and sciences. Earl agreed. “We can’t control CCE and we can’t control Columbia,” he said of Columbia’s Center for Career Education, which is very protective of it’s fairs and networking opportunities. Earl expressed a desire for more collaboration and communication between his department and CCE in the future, but didn’t sound hopeful.

SGA can never have too much orange via Bwog Staff