Greetings to All:
Today I want to specifically address our (nearly 800!) alumni. As some of you will know, one of my top priorities is to build bridges between the School of Economics and our alumni. To this end, I have started hosting occasional alumni lunches at Georgia Tech and, for that matter, in selected cities where we have concentrations of alumni. We just hosted an alumni social at the Georgian Terrace Hotel that coincided with Homecoming – it was a terrific success, with over thirty School of Economics (SOE) alumni in attendance. Events like these will be a regular part of our activities in the future. It is highly gratifying to me personally and to our faculty, to connect with you, meet your partner, and learn about how life is treating you. These events also serve as an opportunity for you to re-connect with former classmates and network with other alumni and your former professors. To use the language of economics, you are an under-utilized asset – for our current students studying economics, for future students, for each other. There is so much you can do (and in some cases already are doing): help us find internships for current students, provide occasional lectures in classes, provide financial support for scholarships or for other purposes that benefit the School, identify non-alumni supporters and opportunities that we might benefit from.
To those of you who already are actively engaged with the School, you have our heartfelt gratitude. If you have not had an opportunity to attend one of our functions, but would like to, please let me know. I’ll do whatever I can (to the point where marginal benefits = marginal costs, of course!) to create opportunities for anyone who wants to be engaged with the School. For the roughly 50 percent of you who live in Georgia, the travel and time costs of re-connecting are relatively low. For those of you who live outside of Georgia, I’m willing to visit you; reciprocally, each of you has a standing invitation to lunch with me any time you might happen to pass through Atlanta. With your support, in a variety of ways, we can enhance our academic programs and the quality of educational experiences for our students.
- David Laband