The Penn State Alumni Association experienced changes in two of its top leadership positions last year, and with those changes have come an aggressive new agenda for the nation’s largest alumni association.

In an informational report to the Board of Trustees on May 14, Marianne E. Alexander ’62, Alumni Association president and president emerita of the Public Leadership Education Network, discussed the Association’s recent initiatives and laid forth a bold vision to become the nation’s most ambitious alumni organization.

Alexander assumed her duties as the seventy-third president of the Penn State Alumni Association on July 1, 2003. Roger L. Williams ’73, ’75g, ’88g began his tenure as Alumni Association executive director just one month prior, on June 1, 2003. Together, the leadership tandem has put together a thorough plan to move the Association forward.

“It’s our ongoing vision to be widely known as the biggest, the best, and the most ambitious organization of our kind in America,” Alexander said. “In so doing, we will become the national exemplar of how such an organization constantly contributes to the betterment of its alma mater.”

As part of its vision, the Alumni Association has embarked on a three-year-long membership campaign, entitled “For the Future.” Currently, the organization is about 4,000 members ahead of where it was at this point last year. The goal, she said, is “to push total membership past the 150,000 mark by the end of this fiscal year—which would only seem fitting as we usher in the University’s one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary year.”

While membership numbers are on the rise, so too are the programs and services the organization offers to its members. Since January the Association has unveiled a new e-newsletter for volunteer leaders, co-sponsored a reunion for Graduate School doctoral alumni, and unveiled a new recognition program for young alumni, entitled the Alumni Achievement Award. The award, which was recommended by the Association’s governing board, was approved by the Board of Trustees.

“The Alumni Achievement Award is designed to recognize young alumni for outstanding personal and professional accomplishments, and to engage those alumni in the life of the University,” Alexander said.

In continuing its support of the University, the Alumni Association recently announced a $300,000 gift from its Margin of Excellence fund that will enable Penn State students to engage in research and other creative pursuits at the undergraduate level. Alexander explained that the gift “continues a tradition of philanthropy unmatched in American higher education.” With the most recent contribution, the Association has now given more than $11.5 million to Penn State since 1988.

Alexander noted that the Association’s positive contributions to the University are not just financial. The Penn State Grassroots Network—a program sponsored and run by the Alumni Association—has recruited 33,742 members. The network is a statewide advocacy system of Penn State alumni and friends who contact their legislators with messages about the need to support Penn State through adequate state funding.

The Alumni Association also has increased its efforts to engage and support broader diversity. “In the last three-and-a-half months alone we sponsored an on-campus lecture by prominent minority poet, actress, and writer Maya Angelou; we co-sponsored the first full-length American Indian powwow in the State College area; and we were the lead sponsor of a reunion for Penn State’s women athletes,” she said.

Through sponsorship of two student organizations, the Blue & White Society and the Lion Ambassadors, the Association is continuing its efforts to become more student-oriented. The Blue & White Society, composed of student members of the Association, was recently named University Park’s most active large student organization for the second year in a row. Membership in the Society now totals 3,404, with 2,621 members at University Park alone.