Welcome to 2008! A new year is always exciting, a time to look ahead to upcoming opportunities with a fresh perspective. This brand-new year already promises a wealth of activities and opportunities for Columbia College and our alumni community from coast to coast.

In Los Angeles, we’ll roll out the red carpet for “A Night at the Oscars,” our annual Columbia Oscar viewing party, on February 24. This is always an amazing event that brings our West Coast alumni together for a fun, glamorous evening.

In Manhattan, our New York alumni welcome the AEMM Spring Tour during spring break in late March. Current students will visit New York and have the opportunity to network with alumni in the businesses they aspire to enter.

Here in Chicago, our Manifest Urban Arts Festival celebrates the class of 2008 in true Columbia style. Hundreds of alumni return to campus to celebrate with them, to reconnect with old friends and faculty, and to take part in this dazzling celebration of the creativity that makes our alma mater so special. Our alumni volunteers are already working to organize the 2008 Manifest reception and celebration, and they have bold plans. So save the date—Friday, May 16—you won’t want to miss it!

Later in the year, we will celebrate our Alumni Reunion Weekend on October 3 & 4. Building on the success of 2007’s Homecoming and Reunion, we hope to have yet another great showing of alumni pride. This is the one time of the year when we alumni really get to take over the campus.

This is just a taste of what we have in the works for 2008. You’ll find many more opportunities to connect with Columbia—as well as details on the events above—on theLoop, our online alumni community. You can also find your alumni friends there, using the online directory. I encourage you, as we begin this exciting new year, to visit www.colum.edu/alumni and find five friends—and invite them to get involved!

As the alumni who joined together in a rousing cheer of “WE are Columbia” at the 2007 reunion can attest, it feels good to be a part of Columbia these days! We hope you experience this in 2008.

Sincerely,

Josh Culley-Foster (B.A. ’03)
National Director of Alumni Relation