The Georgia Tech Honors Program (HP) was founded in 2006, accepting the first incoming cohort of 95 students in the fall semester of that year. Since then, just over 2,000 students who participated in the Honors Program have graduated from Georgia Tech, going out into the world to do some amazing things (you can read more about some of our alums on the HP website). Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a way to track and stay in contact with HP alums as they move around Georgia, the United States, and the globe, changing residential and email addresses. Until now!
The HP has partnered with the Georgia Tech Foundation (GTF) to build a database of Honors Program alums. Before the partnership with GTF, the HP had no systematic way to track and reach out to alums, particularly if they were no longer using their Georgia Tech email addresses. Through the use of the bb:GOLD (Blackbaud: Georgia Tech Online Database) advancement CRM, the Georgia Tech Foundation has built a system that tags HP participants and adds their information to a database once they become alumni. Through the GTF-HP partnership, the HP will be able to engage alums in such activities as creating an advisory board, having networking events for current students, and building mentoring relationships between alums and current students.
HP Senior Program and Operations Manager Lauren Evans, who has been with the Honors Program since 2014 and seen almost a decade of HP students graduate and go out into the world, reflected on the partnership:
It can be a challenge to stay connected with our students once they leave Georgia Tech and the next phases of their lives take them all over the world, and bb:Gold has given us the ability to access updated contact information to help us solve that issue.
The HP has already reached out to some members of the inaugural fall 2006 cohort, including Jing Li (IE, 2010) who was just named to the 2023 Georgia Tech Alumni Association 40-Under-40 list. Stay tuned for more on our fantastic alums, including Jing, in future OUE monthly newsletters.