Executive Council

Please mark your calendars! IUAA Executive Council meets Dec. 5-6, 2008

The IUAA Executive Council will convene in Indianapolis at the University Place Conference Center and Hotel Dec. 5-6, 2008 (There will be a Dec. 4 meeting for Board of Managers, Cabinet Staff, and new Executive Council members only). If you are part of Executive Council, you will receive an e-mail notification and registration information in the coming weeks. Please contact Rebecca Keith at (812) 855-1713 or if you have any questions or concerns.

IUAA Executive Council Meeting June 13-14, 2008

The IUAA Executive Council met on June 13-14 in Bloomington, Ind. during Cream & Crimson Alumni Weekend. View the June 2008 minutes and the June 2008 evaluation summary. Hoosier men’s head basketball coach Tom Crean provided a video welcome to the alumni leaders and volunteers gathered at the IUAA Awards Banquet on Friday, June 13. Tom Martz, president and CEO of the IUAA, rolled out the IUAA Strategic Plan 2008 and Beyond. His keynote address follows.


Tom Martz
Remarks to the Executive Council
Friday, June 13, 2008
Frangipani Room, IMU

Thank you, MaryEllen.

Thanks also to YOU — our wonderful alumni volunteers, staff, and associates. Without you, this great work we have before us could not be done.

If you will, let me take you back to the night of April 8, 1854. The night was calm, and as night passed into the next morning, a freight train moved through the sleepy small town. The brakeman on the rear of the train noticed a fire coming out of the cupola of the small seminary college’s main building. He threw on the train’s brakes and the local volunteer at the fire station was notified. The fire bell began to clang, calling the volunteers to race to the fire scene.

It was 2 a.m. on April 9, 1854.

The fire burned well into that April ninth day. In the end, the building and all that was in it was lost, including the school bell which lay in a melted heap at the bottom of the ashes. Books, records, equipment and all furnishings gone.

Three months later, the president of the small Midwestern seminary college called together 14 other graduates of the college. Even before the fire, the college was seeing very tough times. Its curriculum had become out of date. There were pressures to move the college to another location, either the state capital or to another much more thriving town 20 some miles east.

The purpose of the meeting of the president and the alumni of the college was to ask these 14 graduates to speak on behalf of the college to the local county government and state legislature on the importance of keeping the college in that small town, and to help the president raise the private funds to rebuild the lost building and the records, equipment and furnishings destroyed in the fire.

Most of you know this is how Indiana University remained in Bloomington, and most of you know this day, three months after the fire that destroyed the college’s building, was the day that created the Society of Indiana University Alumni, our IU Alumni Association.

Those were challenging times for the university. They required visionary leaders willing to work hard for their alma mater’s sake, dedicating themselves to insuring the future of a great university from which we have all — all of us here today — gained so much.

Today we are in different times, but also challenging ones. The university is a great university focused on its two main missions: education and research. Our great university has the proud heritage of having seven Nobel Prize winners.

Very few institutions in the US have that kind of education and research heritage to speak about.
But that is in the past. Now we look to the future. I have been asked recently by one of our Board of Managers: “Tom, what is your vision for the association…where do you see it headed? The volunteer leadership wants to know”.

Let me spend a little time talking about that, and that will lead us into to some materials on your desk.

We hope you will enjoy the gift of the kaleidoscope that you received this morning. This small token of our gratitude is a playful trinket — but it really represents a bigger concept.

As you know, we have been working on our six teams of engagement since last fall, with your help, after the charge we received from President McRobbie last spring, much like President Daily challenged the original 14 alumni of the school to do in 1854.

In December, you all broke into small groups and discussed the six areas — internationalization, marketing, diversity, advocacy, development, and recruitment. These teams continued to work and the team leaders submitted their final reports to me in January. Those reports are in the Teams section of your Executive Council manual.

At the same time, President McRobbie has been discussing the mission of Indiana University — that of education and research — at many of the events that he’s attended this year. We’ve called this the two-lensed approach at viewing the university mission. By viewing the association’s programs through these lenses and applying the six areas of engagement, a kaleidoscopic vision for the association was formed — a vision that not only allowed for clear focus for the future — but for a creative pattern of color and shapes in the blending of association programs, actions, and people to address the six areas of university involvement.

We hope you’ll think of the IUAA when you look through your kaleidoscope!

With this year’s graduation we surpassed the 520,000 living graduates of this great eight- campus university. Think about that … 520,000 people! These people live in 154 countries throughout the world and most of them love IU as we all do. How do we embrace them? How do we reach and nourish their involvement with our alma mater?

My vision is that we become a society of alumni that is inclusive of all IU graduates — all races, creeds, national origins, religious backgrounds, and heritages. That we reach all corners of the world with our graduates and that we charge ourselves to do what those first 14 alumni did. That we seek to help our great alma mater continue to be a leader in education and research throughout this 21st century and beyond.

In the past few weeks, our senior staff members have been engaged in some very interesting — and inspiring — training. We are working on the Franklin Covey Leadership Training Series. Among other things, the training talks about four pillars or imperatives of great leaders: Inspiring trust, clarifying our purpose, aligning our systems, and unleashing talent. This training will go hand in hand with our future success as an Association. And that success depends on our roadmap — the direction in which we’re heading.

The Strategic Plan that was at your table when you arrived is that road map. We should all be very proud of it, and we believe it will have a lasting impact on IUAA and its relationship with the university.

We should all look forward to the next phase of our growth with this Strategic Plan.

In this document, you’ll find eight core goals.

The first goal is DEVELOPMENT.

The IU Alumni Association seeks to build meaningful and long-lasting relationships that foster loyalty and connections with each other, the Alumni Association, and the university.

  1. We often talk about being the “friend raisers” while the Foundation is the “fund raisers”. But having had the opportunity to work in both sides, let me tell you, there is no greater friend than one who gives another the opportunity of giving to others. To illustrate that let me tell you a quick story of my first experience with that concept while working here at the IU Alumni Association in the 1970’s as the director of family camping.

    I was fortunate at that time to have as one of my faculty speakers at Camp Brosius a fellow by the name of Joe Muller. Joe was one of the co-founders of a means of putting fluoride treatments into toothpaste. This process was sold to Procter & Gamble and became Crest toothpaste. Joe, during that time, became fairly wealthy. His experience at Camp Brosius was an enjoyable one. He was so moved by the program and what the program did to bring IU alumni together, that he decided to deed over his farm to help fund a similar camp on Lake Monroe.
  2. In my office today, you will see a picture of a much younger Tom Martz with Joe’s arm around my shoulder as he and his wife had signed over the farm. Pictured with us are a much younger Pete Yoder, a young Jerry Tardy, a young Frank Jones and others. But it was as we were walking to the actual signing that Joe again put his arm around my shoulder and with tears streaming down his cheek said to me, “you don’t know how much this means to me, to be giving back to the university what my university has given to me!”

    Those words have stayed with me ever since.
  3. IUAA will never become the fundraisers but we would be doing great disservice to our many alumni friends if we did not help provide such opportunities. We will continue to be a great partner with the IU Foundation and our IU president in this noble effort.

The second goal is ADVOCACY – A CALL TO ACTION.

The IU Alumni Association calls to action its more than 500,000 living graduates and friends to advocate for the university.

  1. Do you remember the 1980s and “Hands Across America”? People lined up in streets, lanes, and towns across the US linking hands. Now, that was symbolic, but it inspired us to imagine what all of us could do by working together.
  2. Imagine if we could inspire, “link hands” as it were, with all 520,000 living graduates to work on behalf of IU and one another.

The third goal is INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI RELATIONS.

The IUAA serves the university’s alumni and students through international outreach.

  1. We all realize today that one place in the world is tied to every other place in the world. Just look at gas prices at the pump. Or, that the cost of corn in Iowa affects the cost of rice in Thailand.
  2. Our students need international experience to learn to navigate the lives they will live in the world of today and tomorrow. We should help provide those students with opportunities to study abroad. Moreover, we should play a part in educating their parents and ourselves about the importance of this study experience.
  3. We need to find ways to embrace our graduates as they move far away from us often to other locations throughout the world.

The fourth goal is COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING.

The IUAA will assist Indiana University through the Association’s communications media and programs in telling the university and IUAA’s stories to alumni and friends.

  1. Look at the three stories I’ve told today of our great university.
    • 1854, the founding of the Association of Alumni
    • The fact that we have seven Nobel Prize winners associated with IU
    • The story of Joe Muller, co-creator of Crest toothpaste
  2. Let’s all vow to tell more of these stories. Let’s make sure all our alumni and friends know them.
  3. More than that, let’s make sure all prospective students know about the greatness of IU from the people they trust — you — their family and friends.

PARTNERSHIPS – our fifth goal.

The IUAA is a vital university citizen in assisting the university’s many partners in support of IU.

  1. Our partners consist of those internal to the institution, like the IUF which I have mentioned, the Varsity Club, the office of International Programs, office of Public Affairs, and others.
  2. But let’s look to create other partnerships like the one that the Central Indiana Chapter is doing with the Purdue association Indianapolis chapter. They are building a Habitat for Humanity House together. Let’s make sure that every citizen of the great State of Indiana knows of the value of IU and the product of the university —its alumni — and how we all work to make this a better state, nation, and world in which we live.

Our sixth goal is DIVERSITY AND MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS.

The IUAA is dedicated to serving the university and its diverse alumni, students, and friends.

  1. We should help the university provide opportunities for under-represented students to attend IU. This is of key importance if we are to help the state and nation address social issues.
  2. But diversity extends beyond race to things such as country of origin, religious beliefs, and heritage.
  3. Over the next five years 50 percent of our senior faculty will retire. We need to assist the university in recruiting the best and most diverse students and faculty in order that all students gain from their experiences and prospective.

The seventh goal: FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF THE IUAA.

One University – one Association: The IUAA will structure itself to effectively serve the university of the future.

  1. IU has a wonderful heritage conceived by Dr. Wells and fulfilled by Dr. Ryan – “Eight Front Doors to One Great University”. This is a special and very rare concept in a university. No matter what campus you graduate from, you get an IU degree.
  2. But 20 years down the road, what will IU as an institution look like? How will that institution shape the structure of IUAA? We must be aware of change and responsive to it.

The eighth and final goal: RESOURCES.

The IUAA must garner the necessary resources to fulfill the association’s mission and strategic efforts.

  1. We are an interesting organization. Probably most of you do not know that we are two organizations in one. We are an arm, or division, of Indiana University and we are a separate 501c3 corporation.
  2. When I first worked for the Association back in 1976, 80 percent of our income came from the university side of the ledger and 20 percent from the 501c3 corporate side. Today, that is completely reversed. 80 percent comes from the corporate side while 20 percent comes from the university.
  3. Every part of our income source is threatened and could end tomorrow. We, as an association, must remain diligent for new sources of revenue. We must increase paid membership numbers and, most importantly, we must prioritize programs that meet our Strategic Plan goals. These programs will have to look more and more to be self sustaining, to pay for themselves, as threats continue to increase — as with the loss of NelNet earlier this year — and more of our affinity programs may come into unjustified scrutiny.

Each of these eight goals I’ve just mentioned has actions to be taken. The actions then contain indicators of progress. Each step in this chain leads back to supporting Indiana University’s two-lensed mission …education and research. It is ambitious, but vital to our growth as an Association. And the more people we have rallying around our common goal, the more synergy we have.

As I said earlier, Indiana University now has more than 520,000 graduates. 520,000! A significant portion lives in 154 different countries of the world. And everything we do needs to bring them closer to IU. As Thomas Friedman has said, “the world is flat.” And we have the capability through our programs, our technology, and our great big arms to reach every corner.

We’ve had a stellar past.

Think about our past leaders — my predecessors:

Claude Rich had the vision for growth and partnership with the greater community.

Frank Jones brought internal experience and good business sense that led to our incorporation in 1970.

Then Jerry Tardy came on board and built and rebuilt lasting relationships with the IU Foundation and the Varsity Club and other university partners.

Ken Beckley took over during a period of unsettling after Jerry’s passing, offering stability, consistency, and financial security.

As we look to the future via this Strategic Plan, let’s keep an eye on the past. Let’s remember and honor our heritage and that of our alumni as part of our mission.

This is your charge, now, as we move into our small groups. We are asking you to discuss and brainstorm on what I’ve presented to you and what this Strategic Plan can mean for you back in your corner of this world — in your chapter, in your board meeting, in your Indiana Day event.

I encourage you to share and help us all grow even better.

Let’s embrace all 520,000 living IU graduates – let’s reach more than 154 corners of the world.

I look forward to this shared vision of the future with you. Let’s always keep precious our great alma mater.

Thank you.