Alumni living abroad tapped to become Husky ambasssadors

The UConn Alumni Association has started a program to reach out to graduates who live overseas, hoping to reconnect them to the University and seek their assistance in welcoming study abroad students and visiting faculty to their countries of residence.

The Association’s executive director, Lisa Lewis, and Debra Crary, manager of membership and international alumni relations, have begun an effort to identify what could be thousands of alumni living overseas.

They hope to persuade some of them in as many countries as possible to become Husky ambassadors, who will help faculty, staff, and current students who travel there.

“It was clear when I arrived here that there was a desire for our undergraduate and graduate students to become global citizens, to provide them with a more international focus,” Lewis says.

“We thought that we should support that effort, and there was a sense that we could contribute and, at the same time, help our alumni reconnect to the University.”

The idea of creating a UConn presence abroad has percolated for several years, says Crary, but the program really starting taking off after Lewis became executive director of the Association just over a year ago.

“As UConn becomes more international in its reach, with not only our alumni but faculty and students crossing the globe,” she says, “we want to make sure there’s somebody there for them. A smiling face, a ready handshake, a colleague who can help them learn about a new country.”

Gregory Waddell was one of the first alumni to respond to the call from Storrs for overseas graduates to help the Alumni Association internationalize its efforts.

A 2002 UConn graduate now living in London, Waddell says, “I’ll always value my experiences at UConn and feel incredibly fortunate to have studied at one of America’s classic universities.”

Waddell is involved in international marketing management and corporate social responsibility for the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.

“As an ambassador in London,” he says, “I hope to convey to UConn students the importance of appreciating a broader international business community and the potential of emerging markets, in addition to galvanizing the strong network of alumni living in the UK.”

Lewis and Crary have also received enthusiastic responses from alumni in Argentina, France, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and Dubai.

Staff from the Office of Multicultural and International Affairs, the Department of International Services and Programs, and the Study Abroad program have pitched in, too, as have a number of deans and department heads who responded to an e-mail by contributing the names and contact information for alumni they know.

“Our biggest challenge is trying to find our alumni,” says Lewis.

“We don’t have as many of the tools to find them overseas as we do here, so much of our knowledge is anecdotal. As we do find them, though, we ask them who they know, and start to build that list. And when we do talk to somebody, we’re finding that many of them want to do more.”