June 7, 2007

Dear Kris [Treasurer], Gary [President], Marie [LIS Faculty Member] and all the other wonderful SC&I Alumni:

Thank you for selecting me as one of the 2007 SC&I Alumni Scholarship Award Recipients. It is a tremendous honor! Since I am taking Multi-Media Production as my final class this summer, the award funds will be put to good use soon. I look forward to seeing the SC&I Alumni at your October 12, 2007, anniversary event.

Thanks again!

Warmly,

Barb Hauck-Mah

June 9, 2007

Dear Gary Radford and the SC&I Alumni Association,

Thank you very much for sponsoring the SC&I Alumni Association Scholarship Award. I was thrilled to be selected as a recipient of this award - it was a real honor! And thank you for your generous funding of this award - the $1,000 will be very helpful in paying back school loans.

I also really appreciated the Alumni Association's funding of NJLA and Book Expo. These conferences were both great experiences and I might not have attended them without your encouragement and support.

Thank you again! I look foward to being part of the SC&I Alumni Association.

Sincerely,

Becky Dean

The SC&I Alumni Association also provides essential travel support for students presenting papers at regional, national, and international conferences. In 2006-2007, the SC&I Alumni Association provided $5,000 in travel support that enabled Ph.D. students to present their work at national and international conferences, including the annual meeting of the International Communication Association held in Dresden, Germany. The association also provides support to defray the costs of student participation in professional conferences sponsored by groups such as the New Jersey Communication Association, the Public Relations Society of America and the New Jersey Library Association. In Spring 2007, we provided support that enabled students to attend the 2007 Book Expo at the Jacob Javits Conference Center in New York City. We received the following note from student Elizabeth McDermott on June 4, 2007:

Hi

Just wanted to pass on my thanks for enabling students to attend the Book Expo. Ellie Strbo and I (both students) enjoyed the experience immensely. It was certainly overwhelming - and initially we thought perhaps we should have allowed two days to see everything but we were happily exhausted at the end of day one. We met publishers, authors and even saw a celebrity. We missed out on the major book signings so we are already looking forward to 2009 when we heard it's back in NY!

We really appreciate the opportunities Rutgers and the SC&I Alumni Association provide us to attend all these events.

Regards

Elizabeth McDermott

Please accept the thanks of the Information Technology and Informatics Council for the $500 grant the Association gave to the organization. The program evaluation session was a big success – the students took it quite seriously, and provided me and our faculty with rich data about the positive aspects of the program and the elements that could be improved. The session was held at Rafferty’s restaurant in New Brunswick – the students thoroughly enjoyed the dinner and expressed their thanks to the Alums for allowing them to enjoy some of their favorite dishes after the group interview. The student leaders really had a good time!

Hearing the voices of the graduates will allow us to continue to create a quality undergraduate academic program in the spirit of SC&I. As you know, I’ve shared the results of the group interview with the Library and Information Science faculty, and we have already had two additional proposals for topics courses from the faculty as a result of the students’ comments about courses in which they would like to enroll. In spring 2008 Xiangmin Zhang will be offering a course called “Working with Linux,” and in the winter session 2008 Bruce Rights will be organizing and offering a course called “Introduction to Computer Hardware Basics.” Both of these courses were suggested by students when I asked them which courses we do not currently offer, but which they would like to take.

Many thanks go to the Alumni Association for helping the student organizations through grants like this one.

Best wishes,

Claire

Professor Radford,

This is Vishnu Narayanan, former president of the ITI Council. I just wanted to thank you and the Alumni Association for your extremely generous donation for our ITI evaluation dinner. I truly hope that this association between the ITI council and the Alumni Association develops into a strong, mutually beneficial relationship between the two organizations.

Thank you once again for all your support, and please pass on my kindest thanks to the rest of your organization.

Sincerely,

Vishnu Narayanan
ITIC President '06 - '07