Simms shares tips for better alumni engagement
July 11, 2024
Jeffrey Simms
Jeffrey Simms, MSPH, is both assistant professor and associate chair for alumni and external affairs in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. He co-authored two articles on alumni engagement in a recent issue of the Journal of Health Administration Education.
The first article, titled “Optimizing Alumni Engagement: A Framework to Develop Mutually Beneficial Alumni Relations,” proposes a framework for enhancing alumni involvement with academic programs.
The co-authors, including experts from four other universities, state that alumni engagement is critical for keeping academic programs connected to the ever-changing health care administration industry — and that such engagement can be mutually beneficial to programs and alumni.
The framework they outline is designed to help programs identify opportunities and activities that simultaneously enhance students’ learning experience and are personally rewarding for alumni. They address how to find the right engagement fit for unique alumni circumstances and preferences, and offer tips for common challenges.
The ultimate goal is to forge stronger relationships between the program and their alumni community, with the added bonuses of boosting philanthropy and advocacy.
“It has been an amazing privilege to work in alumni engagement throughout my sixteen-year tenure here in the Department of Health Policy and Management,” Simms says. “Graduates of our various degree programs play such an integral role in the educational experience for current students, and there are so many opportunities to engage alumni outside of the traditional classroom.”
The second article addresses “Engaging Alumni to Create an Ecosystem of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging in Healthcare Management Education.”
This piece explores the fact that the current health system workforce in the United States does not reflect the population it serves, particularly among its leadership ranks — even though having diverse health care leaders can enhance access to care, communication, innovation, quality of care, workplace satisfaction and profitability.
Simms and his co-authors assert that health care management education programs can shift this paradigm by implementing systematic diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) efforts to recruit and support students with diverse backgrounds and experiences. However, students from underrepresented populations may face unique challenges, including a sense of isolation and a lack of mentors.
The co-authors surveyed recent graduates of five master’s programs who are now in the first 2-5 years of their careers. The survey findings show that, despite visible DEIB efforts, nearly half of graduates feel neither that they could be themselves while enrolled in their program, nor that their program adequately prepared them for the DEIB challenges they now face in the field.
More positively, the survey results also suggest that alumni are a willing but untapped resource for academic programs. Alumni can help advance DEIB efforts by mentoring students, sharing insights from their career journeys and connecting students with others who have similar lived experiences.
“I am so glad I had the opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues from other programs across the country to share this information about alumni engagement,” shares Simms. “There is not a lot of academic research specifically related to alumni engagement for health management education, but it’s an important topic.”
Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.
