First conducted in 2007, the University of Chicago "Relationship Monitor" surveys alumni living around the globe to reveal ways of increasing engagement. This year, we'll learn what has changed.

The study, which will sample up to one-quarter of the University’s more than 125,000 alumni from all programs and schools and all age cohorts, will explore how alumni currently feel about, and interact with, the university and how they would like to do so in the future. It will also examine the relationship between individuals' satisfaction with their experience as a student (even when that occurred many years ago) and their current relationship with the University.

Because this will be the second wave of the study, we will also be able to compare the new findings to the 2007 baseline data, which represented the University of Chicago's first pan-university alumni research in recent memory.

Senior Associate Bill Hayward, who leads Slover Linett's higher ed practice, is looking forward to working with the Office of Alumni Relations and Development and its Institutional Research team to conduct this complex study. "As we did in 2007, we'll focus on helping the whole university learn how it can better engage all kinds of alumni. The findings from that first round led to numerous enhancements at the different schools and units around campus, and now we'll get to see if those efforts have moved engagement levels upward."

As in 2007, the Relationship Monitor project will be managed at the University of Chicago by Diana Joyce, Director of Market and Institutional Research at the Office of Alumni Relations and Development.

Category: Higher education