By John Garvey, President
CUA Magazine, Fall 2011

If you are like most CUA Magazine readers, you’ve already read Class Notes on pages 33 through 40. We recently conducted a comprehensive survey of Catholic University alumni, and among our many findings was that Class Notes is your favorite part of the magazine.

I’m not surprised. (Nor do I feel slighted that President’s Forum was not your top pick.) Who doesn’t want to read about their friends and former classmates?

Already, we have acted on this one finding. The magazine staff has added two more pages to Class Notes, along with the addition of “alumni spotlights” to that section. And that’s just for starters. Look for a newly designed and revamped magazine in your mailboxes in 2012.

CUA Magazine was just one small piece of the alumni survey. Last spring we invited 10,500 of our alumni to participate in the survey. The group was selected randomly and included both undergraduate and graduate alumni. We commissioned Maguire Associates, a research-based consulting firm with a solid track record of serving higher education. This was the first outsourced alumni survey of such a comprehensive magnitude commissioned by CUA.

Primarily, we wanted to know how satisfied you are with your student and alumni experience. Do you feel well informed about Catholic University? What programs and services interest you and provide you with a connection to the University? How can we better serve you and communicate with you?

We received 903 completed surveys — a respectable response rate, we’ve been told. And now with a thick report of survey results in hand, we are working to better meet your needs and engage you in the Catholic University community.

There are some survey findings we can act on quickly. The survey tells us you want to know who is attending alumni events. So now when you register online for those events, there is a drop-down box that allows you to see who has already registered.

You want more electronic communication and we hope you have noticed that we are enhancing our websites and email outreach. Other changes will take a bit longer as we work to refine our programs and events to more closely meet your expectations.

The survey also tells us that the alumni who are most connected to the University after graduation are those who were happiest with their student experience. As it happens, the goals I have established as I enter my second year as President are related to enhancing the undergraduate student experience at the University.

We want all of our alumni to know how much we value and need them. Several months ago when we began planning CUA’s 125th anniversary celebration and developed the idea for the

Cardinal Service Commitment with the goal of asking the Catholic University community to record 125,000 hours of service by Founders Day, we knew from the beginning that alumni had to be part of this challenge. As we watch our recorded service hours continue to rise, our alumni are providing competition for our students in their volunteer activities. When we reach the 125,000-hour goal, it will be — like so many other endeavors of this University — with your help.

We welcome your input: If you have ideas for CUA Magazine, please contact the editors at cua-magazine@cua.edu.  If you have ideas for our alumni relations staff, please contact them at cua-alumni@cua.edu.