The 2nd year of What’s The Tea on Your Future w/Black Alumni during Future Fest 2024 brought together alumni, students and staff to engage in conversations around being Black as students and professionals. This program was in collaboration with the Black Student Union’s Welcome Black Weekend and Development and Alumni Relations’ Black Alumni Weekend.
In attendance consisted of over 50 students, 25 alumni and 10+ staff totaling to over 85 folks in community. We were charged to increase attendance for niche programming like this by 10% and we did that and some – totaling to an 50% increase for students if not the same for alumni!
Anecdotally, alumni and students were happy the event happened as some stated:
“I haven’t been involved as an alum yet had to come back for this.”
“So glad this event happened.”
“I want to connect to get some students hired when I have roles opened in a few months”
In addition, at the conclusion of the event, folks wanted to continue to stay after and talk. One student shared, “I came to network!” They asked me, “Clifton, can I just have two minutes to talk to this alum.” Another alum ensured they connected and had a quick chat.
Obviously, we learned that MORE time was needed – especially for authentic connection.
Looking forward to the work continuing – through Black Alumni Weekend, Welcome Black Weekend and Future Fest and beyond.
More about the program:
Check out the guidebook / program to see what we did. Check out the presentation to see how we talked about life design and the full details of the program.
Check out the video and photo collage of the action during the small group discussions:
Video Footage
Photo Collage
Videos created by Clifton and graphic of students at table created by Harmony Madu.
Written by Clifton E. Shambry Jr.
