Around Campus
Come Back for Open House 2009: April 16-18
Every year Cal Poly’s Open House gives prospective, admitted, and current students, their supporters, and alumni a chance to see the best of Cal Poly.
The event will kick off on Thursday, April 16, with Club Preview Night at Farmer’s Market, followed by Admitted Students’ Preview Day (Friday, April 17), and Campus Showcase Day (Saturday, April 18).
Campus Showcase Day offers a wide variety of activities including the traditional Poly Royal Parade, over 200 club and concession booths, Kids’ Fair, Cal Poly Tractor Pull, Cal Poly Rodeo, and the music department’s Open House concert.
Detailed schedules and additional information about Open House 2009 can be found on the Open House Web site.
Have You Joined PolyLink?
Contributed by Teresa Hendrix, Web Team Leader, Cal Poly University Advancement
PolyLink is Cal Poly's free, private online community for alumni. Unlike other social networks, only Cal Poly alumni (and faculty and staff, if they request it) can get in to PolyLink. PolyLink launched in September 2007 and now has nearly 11,000 alumni members who log in regularly. That's more than the 10,000 alumni in Facebook and the 3,600 alumni in LinkedIn. (As of February 24, 2009, there are 243 journalism alumni in PolyLink out of 2,258 journalism alumni on record).
In terms of social networking style, PolyLink is a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn – all members have personal pages and can share photos and personal updates, as well as business contact information and career goals. They can drag in feeds from other places (including their LinkedIn and Facebook pages). All members can send each other 'in system' email – and if members want to share their preferred e-mail address and other contact info on their personal pages they can, and in fact most do. Members can also send 'blind' emails to about 15,000 other alumni who have not yet joined PolyLink. Those alums can chose to ignore the emails, or respond.
All alumni always control what personal information is displayed to others in PolyLink. Since it's the “online alumni directory” for Cal Poly, the minimum display is First Name, Last Name, and Class Year. That info gets rolled in with every graduating class. Beyond that, it's up to the individual alum.
Unlike LinkedIn, everything in PolyLink is free and once inside, alumni can "see" all of the personal pages created by alumni members – as well as the PolyLink job boards. More than 1,200 alumni have volunteered to mentor other alumni via PolyLink and the job boards are growing.
Unlike Facebook or MySpace – everyone in PolyLink is a real Cal Poly alum. You can't just say you're a Cal Poly alum, and get in. All members must use their real names in PolyLink, and only alumni on record at Cal Poly can receive passwords allowing them to log in.
That extra security has helped alumni of the '60s, '70s and '80s feel comfortable in PolyLink along with alumni of the '90s and '00s, which is great, because the alumni of the '60s, '70s, and '80s are in a good place to mentor (or hire) younger alumni.
PolyLink also has the best "Locate a Classmate" search engine on the Web. It's great whether you're looking to find one special alum, or a list of all alumni from a particular major or class year.
Click here to access the Poly Link Web site.
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