News

Ross University School of Medicine Alumni Council Discusses Upcoming Initiatives

11/19/09

The Ross University School of Medicine Alumni Council met in New Brunswick, NJ, on September 25, 2009, to discuss the state of alumni relations as well as ideas for expanding alumni programs and services. As a result of this meeting, the Office of Alumni Relations is looking to explore several new programmatic ideas.

One of the primary goals of the Office of Alumni Relations is to provide opportunities for alumni to connect with each other and with the University. We are currently working on facilitating this initiative in multiple ways, including our new Online Community and our upcoming Alumni Reunion in Dominica. Recommendations from the Alumni Council have led us to consider hosting smaller regional “reunions” to meet the needs of alumni who are unable to travel back to the Caribbean due to time and financial constraints. To this end, we will be exploring different options and formats for possible regional events. We will also look to begin building a presence at national professional conferences.

Another goal is to connect alumni with current students to assist them during their journey through Ross. Many of our alumni are sensitive to this issue, as they remember feeling uncertain at one time or another during their medical education experience. The recently implemented Orientation program has been received extremely well by first semester students, and the University looks to build off this success by adding a Transition program to assist in transitioning students from basic sciences to the clinical portion of their medical education.

We are looking to expand the scope of alumni-student connections by finding ways to communicate with students in all phases of the program, especially by using technology to reach students on campus as well as those currently in clinical training across the country. Additionally, we are looking to mirror the AskRoss Frequently Asked Questions by creating a similar database of questions posed by clinical students and answered by alumni. In keeping with this total view of the Ross experience, we are looking to create programs to serve our young alumni at another crossroads in their careers—the completion of their residencies.

Many of these projects may change as we begin to develop them. As always we are here to serve our valued alumni and would be more than happy to receive feedback and suggestions. We are looking to our alumni to participate in many of these initiatives—if you have any interest in participating in or assisting with any of these programs, please feel free to contact us directly. The Office of Alumni Relations can be contacted via phone at (732) 509-4600 or via email at alumniaffairs@rossu.edu.