January 11, 2015
Dear Schutzites and Friends of Schutz:
Paul Clark, SASAF President 2014 Reunion
Now into my third year on your alumni board, I am pleased to report we have made some progress with the communications strategy that we adopted in 2012:
- We have been updating our community database and this will remain a work-in-progress, as we expected.
- We have tested the idea of moving our annual reunions and meetings to different states to give more people a chance to participate, in South Carolina outside Spartanburg in 2013 and then in the Boston, Massachusetts area this past summer. We will continue this practice, and hopefully, do a better job of getting out the word earlier each year!
- The keystone of the plan was to improve and expand our website schutzalumni.org
to become a way of staying in touch with each other and our news, to replace the traditional newsletter of past years, and above all to be an interesting place to visit from time to time. We have made some progress with the website, but there is much still to do.
I can tell you that we have adopted a detailed design plan for the website, and are working to put the plan into action. Be patient with us… I will be explaining more about the website and how we hope it will work as the primary way of keeping our community connected, alive and vibrant, as with our memories of the special place and time that Schutz was for us.
Meanwhile, the arrival of 2015 brings our next Grand Reunion, to be held next July 9-12 at the same venue as the 2012 gathering on the edge of Washington, D.C. We have booked the National 4-H Conference Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland and you will find on the website information for registering for the reunion and booking your space. We are planning lots of fun activities, with details to come later.
Schutz will be celebrating its 90th anniversary next June over graduation week. A summary of the planned events appears on the website. I will be attending on behalf of our organization, as will others from the board, and I would hope to see a larger group of the Schutzites from its early era join us there. One of my interests is to build closer ties to the school, and Head of School Nathan Walker and I are planning to explore some ideas with the faculty and student body during this week. We will have more to say about this. In the meantime please let me know if any of you would like to be involved and be on hand in Alex next June.
While you are on the website www.schutzalumni.org , please register as members, as well. This will be necessary for you to be able to access some of the webpages and privacy-protected information, but it also allows us to update our database. The steps are easy; just follow the directions under the “registration” tab found on the home page.
I hope to see all of you in Washington next July. A belated Happy New Year to you all!
Paul Clark ‘68