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NEW YORK, May 10, 2010—According to Lynn Mitchell (‘86), The King’s College Alumni Association had a unique problem. “The first graduating class from the New York City campus is about 10 years younger than the youngest Briarcliff graduate,” she said. “And many Briarcliff alums have difficulty embracing the Empire State Building campus as their school.”
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Kellen DiStefano (‘08) said the younger alumni “didn’t know or fully understand the legacy of faithfulness and impact of the older alumni, or of their experience and wisdom.”
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But this “problem” also created a powerful opportunity: to intentionally “close the gap between the old and the new alumni,” as Mitchell describes it.
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DiStefano said the benefits for all alumni and the school could be tremendous: “When you partner, you not only utilize each other’s resources, but you care for each other. This ‘problem’ provides us a fantastic opportunity to model what it means to be the Body of Christ.”
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So the alumni association has set out on a course to do just that.
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In coming up with a plan to close the gap, Mitchell noted that “we already have a lot going for us. For example, once Briarcliff alums visit the school in the Empire State Building and meet the students and faculty, many of them are able to see and feel the common bond that connects us all. It happened to me!”
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And DiStefano said that the current students and younger alumni are “hungry for what the older alumni have to offer—their perspective, their experience. Young people have a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and that’s what we have to offer, but how do we not just start the race well, but finish it well? How do we maintain our careers, our families, and our spiritual lives over many decades? Many of us are anxious to get that kind of mentoring from those older than us.”
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Mitchell said that the first step in the process is to realize that “The King’s College is not a building—as grand as that old lodge in Briarcliff Manor was, or as iconic as the Empire State Building is. We are The King’s College.”
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She added that there is much goodwill between the older alumni and the new. “So far, even though we’ve mostly been standing on opposite sides of the gap, we’ve been regarding each other with interest and respect. That’s a great foundation on which to build. We now have to turn that interest and respect into active engagement for the good of the college,” she said.
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One of the ways the alumni association is doing that is to intentionally put representa¬tives of all generations in the leadership of the association. The alumni association’s executive committee now has two recent alumni as mem¬bers. Liz Lindow (‘07) is the vice president, and Kellen DiStefano is the Manhattan alumni rep¬resentative. Mitchell added, “We’ve also formed a new subcommittee that has both old and new alumni working together to improve communication between The King’s College and all alumni—young and old. I think these initiatives will bring us closer together and will help us put to use the considerable resources we have when we cooperate as one body. And we’ll surely have some fun doing it.”
DiStefano said he was excited about what these new alumni initiatives could produce. “There has been a common theme, a common purpose, running through The King’s College from the beginning, and that has been to posi¬tively impact the world for God’s kingdom,” he said. “In that purpose all the alumni have always been united, even though we’ve been working separately. Now, we have the opportunity to work together toward that goal.”
For more information about The King's College please contact: |
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For more information about The
King's College please contact: |
| Warren Smith |
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