PRIDE keeps alumni informed

A&M-Commerce's alumni magazine, PRIDE, expanded the depth of its online presence with its latest issue in an effort to attract new readership.

Assistant Vice President of Marketing Communication Randy Jolly said that when he began working on PRIDE four years ago, it had just been converted from an 18-page black and white newspaper format into a magazine format.

"The purpose of it, initially, was to provide the alumni with an update of what's going on," Jolly said. "It was pretty non-specific. There was no real direction to the magazine. So when I came on board, that's what I inherited."

PRIDE was redesigned to resemble "an annual report" to make it more "professional looking," according to Jolly.

According to Jolly, PRIDE has expanded to a 48-page format in color and debuted online for the fall 2009 semester. The current Spring 2010 issue continues the publication's evolution.

"This one you can actually drill down and get into the stories and see the whole thing," he said. "Eventually where we're going to go with it is not only will you be able to see the stories, but you'll be able to see a video of that person or persons, so that you can see it if you'd like to read it or you can click on a YouTube video."

Jolly said the primary purpose of PRIDE is to inform alumni of the continued success of the university.

"Because we have 60,000 alumni in the university…one of the purposes of PRIDE is to keep alumni informed so that they will be encouraged to give back to the university," Jolly said. "That's kind of the primary goal from the alumni relations angle, is to let them know that their alma mater is well and alive and kicking."

According to Jolly, A&M-Commerce president Dan Jones has given PRIDE to the mayor of Dallas, the Texas governor and even distributed it on foreign trips in order to raise awareness of the university.

"We have a very good relationship with Dr. Jones," Jolly said. "Dr. Jones is very keen on this being the representative piece of the university. Our connection with Dr. Jones is critical. He's a very open and very knowledgeable guy "

PRIDE has won several international awards.

"The quality is as good as anybody," Jolly said. "This is who we are, we're not just a wayward school out in the sticks of East Texas, but we're really a substantial entity, and our alumni magazine actually shows that."

Jolly said it is unlikely that PRIDE will convert to solely online publishing, at least in the near future.

"Out of out 52,000 alumni that we have addresses for, we only have about 6,000 e-mail addresses," he said. "Plus, we've found that the older alumni really like to hold onto something, and it has a real long shelf life."

Jolly said PRIDE is also attempting to put greater focus on younger alumni who are just "getting out and fledging their wings a little bit."

"We want to get back to probably 50 percent alumni that have been out for a while, and the rest of it from 2010 graduation for the next ten or 15 years out, so that it has a younger appeal as well," he said. "We're really trying to connect everybody."

Social networking is another outlet being explored to increase PRIDE readership.

"Social media is becoming a bigger and bigger factor in what we're doing," Jolly said.

According to Publications Writer Ashley Johnson, the A&M-Commerce Alumni Association has a Facebook page that furnishes such an opportunity for PRIDE.

"It has a million different facets…" she said, "But at the heart of it, it is an alumni magazine, so sharing those alumni stories on the alumni Facebook, I think, is where we really want to go with it."

Johnson said the Facebook page is also a reliable source of story ideas.

"As people comment on the alumni association page, a lot of times we can pull out news stories from that," she said. "You just keep building more and more bridges. With every new story, you feel like five more are uncovered."

Jolly said concrete efforts are being made to encourage interest in PRIDE among current students by focusing on recent graduate stories.

"They may be teacher of the year, for instance, in the Dallas school district," he said. "Those are big stories to us. A lot of kids don't even know they can dream big. We're big deals and we don't even know it."

Jolly is pleased with the direction PRIDE is headed.

"It's true, every university does have a great story to tell," he said, "but we have a really neat story and we feel like we're telling it in a really good way."

PRIDE may be viewed online at pride.tamu-commerce.edu.