COLLEGE STATION — Graduates of Texas A&M University’s forest science department are branching out. They’ve formed an alumni association and are searching for all of the 675 people who have earned degrees since the department began in 1969, as well as those who graduated from a two-year program prior to that.
“We’re working on our relationship with the former students. We want them to help us with feedback about the department,” said Dr. Tat Smith, forest science department head.
The Texas A&M Forestry Alumni Association held an organizational meeting in College Station recently and selected Nes Blair Tesno of Conroe as president; Colin Townsend of Jasper as vice president; and Lynn Harding Trabing of Silsbee as secretary-treasurer.
“It is our department’s decision to include the former students as part of our blueprint for the future,” said Laverne Addison, forest science academic advisor and alumni liaison. “The former students will take charge of their group with us doing the support work.”
The group plans to foster networking through a Web site that will be linked to the department’s site (http://165.91.114.1/forest/department/) and will include a newsletter and database of all members and their e-mail addresses. Similar materials will be available for alumni without Internet access.
“They will be supportive of our department’s scholarships, and we’d like them to be involved in our curriculum development,” Addison said. “A lot of Aggies are now the ‘boss’ — the ones doing the hiring, so we need to be educating students for the types of jobs out there.”
Addison said the former students also are valuable as guest speakers for classrooms, to tell students what ‘real life’ is like.
“Current students can relate to them very well,” she said. The department currently graduates as many as 20 students per year.
Because so many of the former students now live in Colorado, the alumni association will hold its next meeting there in 2001. For more information, contact Addison at (979) 845-9380 orl-addison@tamu.edu.
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