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JSOM Alumni Relations

The mission of the Alumni Relations team is to create opportunities for alumni to learn, reconnect, influence the student experience and contribute to the direction of the Jindal School.

The Office of Alumni Relations will identify where the needs and priorities of alumni overlap with those of students and the Jindal School. We will work with alumni to create programs that address these interests. These efforts will give alumni a greater voice in the present and future of the Jindal School.

Alumni Relations Director, Caylin Blockley, works to inform alumni of opportunities to engage with the Jindal School.

In fulfilling this mission, our alumni relations team can help you:

  • Track alumni from your program.
  • Track alumni in your industry.
  • Plan and execute alumni events for your program graduates. (see JSOM Alumni Relations Guidelines and Event Support).
  • Create custom alumni fundraising appeals for your program.
  • Help your alumni create a chapter or affinity group (see Chapter Leaders Manual).
  • Secure alumni mentors for your students.
  • Secure testimonials from your alumni.
  • Highlight your alumni.

One easy way to enlist help from the Alumni Relations team is to include team members on emails, ask them to join planning meetings and invite them to participate in any of your events, programs or initiatives that include your alumni.

Connect with Us

Our Director of Alumni Relations is eager to help keep our alums engaged. Contact Caylin to help plan events, programs or initiatives.

Caylin Blockley

Caylin Blockley, Director
Caylin.Blockley@UTDallas.edu
(972)-883-5879
JSOM 12.510C

jsomalumni@utdallas.edu
jindal.utdallas.edu/alumni/

What Is Alumni Relations?

First Step

On September 1st of their academic graduating year, our JSOM seniors are counted as alums by the university. The First Step Program was created to encourage seniors to take the “first step,” as alumni by making their first gift to JSOM. The gift is in honor of the year the student graduates (i.e., $20.24 gift for the class of 2024). Each gift gives a graduate special recognition at commencement and the sense of belonging to an elite network of more than 55,000 JSOM alums all over.

First Step is for our undergrad, grad and PhD students. Upon making their first donation they may receive a small token of appreciation from our Alumni Relations office.

Alumni Chapters and Affinity Groups

An alumni chapter is a geographically linked group of Jindal School or UT Dallas graduates who are based in the same city or region. Every graduate is welcome, and no distinctions are made among majors, degrees or graduation years. Chapter activities may include happy hours, helping with prospective student recruitment, hosting UT Dallas or Jindal School speakers, or hosting chapter meetings on campus that coincide with campus-based events.

An affinity group, on the other hand, enrolls alumni who have earned the same degree, graduated in the same year or from the same program, or who share the same career or other interests. Affinity groups host the same activities as chapters but may have a special career, professional or other focus.

What Is Needed to Start an Alumni Chapter?

  1. One or two people in an area of interest (see examples below of existing affinity chapters) willing to help get a chapter started. Those who want to help should complete the Alumni Affinity Chapter Leadership Interest Form.
  2. Creativity and time to take the lead in setting up two “meetings” in one calendar year and following through on their execution with the help of Jindal School staff. The JSOM Alumni Relations team has created a Chapter Leaders Manual to help interested alumni launch and run a chapter.
  3. If you have questions, contact Caylin Blockley, director of alumni relations, at Caylin.Blockley@utdallas.edu.

Affinity groups and chapters already launched by JSOM alumni follow below.

For those chapters and groups listed here that do not include contact information, go to Comets Community, the school’s private networking platform for alumni, students, faculty and friends.

After you sign up and sign in, hit Groups in the left drop-down menu. The link opens the list of chapters and affinity groups. Tap on the icon of a group that interests you to join it and contact its administrator.

Alumni Stories and Publicity

Anyone — including alums themselves — can suggest an alumni story.

All alumni story ideas should be submitted to Director of Alumni Relations Caylin Blockley, who will confer with the associate dean of external affairs and the assistant dean of development and alumni relations to decide whether an alumni story is assigned and where it will be used.

If alumni contact us seeking a story or publicity about themselves, we will try to accommodate them in some way. Most often, this means we will write an Alumni Note for MANAGEMENT magazine (see below).

Alumni Story Subjects – What We Cover?

Achievements

Accomplishments, particularly those about career, civic or professional awards, milestones or other attainments, often merit a story.

Examples of these include stories about alumni who have been honored with Dallas Business Journal ‘40 Under 40,’ Minority Business Leader, Women in Business or Women in Technology awards.

NOTE: While we do author stories about alumni who are government officeholders, during election campaign seasons, we do not author stories about alumni in elective office or those seeking elective office.

Achievement — and most alumni — stories should include at least a few sentences on how the Jindal School/UT Dallas contributed to the person’s success.

Entrepreneurs/Innovators

Stories about alums who have created inventions or original approaches to or ways of doing business. Courtney Caldwell, MBA alumna and inventor of the Shear Share app, fits this category. Dr. Peter Baek, an MS alum who invented a syringe-labeling system that integrates with electronic medical records, also fits. As does Jeremy Gregg, an EMBA alum and TedTalk veteran who introduced JSOM to the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, and Rob DeSoto, a 2019 MBA graduate who designed a circuit-board that teaches kids coding, electronics and engineering.

Alumni Affinity Groups

Stories — with lots of photos, please — about alumni special events, fundraising events, JSOM-focused undertakings or group projects or achievements are welcome. Alums like to look for themselves and others they know in the photos.

The most successful of these features are many different — and happy — alums, pictured in an interesting setting in a wide variety of poses.

NOTE: Per University policy, we do not use photos that show alumni — or anyone else— drinking beer, wine, or other alcoholic beverages.

Alumni Notes

Brief updates on JSOM alumni who are included in the Alumni News section of MANAGEMENT magazine. These do not exceed 175 words in length. Typically, they include news about career advancement or a job change, professional development, or achievement.

While personal information about marriages, new babies, moves and lifestyle changes is not excluded, it is secondary to news about jobs and professional achievements.

Alumni Notes are the only stories in which it is OK to refer to alumni by their first names on second and subsequent references.

Alumni Obits

Like Alumni Notes, these appear in the Alumni News section of MANAGEMENT magazine. They usually are brief death notices that recap deceased alums’ lives. We typically do not use obituaries without confirming facts with and getting the permission of relatives.

Alumni Profile/ Feature

A longer story about an alumnus or alumni in the Alumni News section of MANAGEMENT magazine. Usually, the alum to be profiled has a special or longtime tie to the University or to JSOM. A good example ran in the Spring 2023 issue and featured Vlad Wallace, a 2020 BS in Global Business graduate who provided relief to Ukrainian Refugees while preparing for a career in the foreign service.

Facilitators/Mentors/Volunteers

These stories are about alums who give back in a variety of ways. A good example of one ran in the Autumn 2015 issue of MANAGEMENT magazine and featured Pranav Tyagi, a 1998 MBA and 2000 MS in MAS graduate who had served on an industry advisory board, taught a course, had five immediate family members who came to UTD and hired “more than 50 people from UTD” over the years.

Testimonials

These usually are laudatory comments and/or videos from alums endorsing their degree programs. The programs often use the comments on their webpages and for recruiting.

Alumni Relations appreciates being notified about which alums participate and what they say in their testimonials.

If you have an outstanding alumnus who you think we should feature in any of our publications, please reach out to Caylin Blockley.

Alumni Support

Continued support of alumni helps ensure the future success of the Naveen Jindal School of Management.

Corporate Connections

Those alums who seek personal introductions in the Jindal School and other UTD schools and offices, for corporate, professional, publicity or other reasons, should be referred to the alumni relations director.

The Alumni Relations team works side by side with JSOM’s Development and Corporate Relations teams and can help alumni with businesses and in industry build partnerships that align their corporate needs with school resources.

The teams collaborate with one another and with academic and administrative units in the Jindal School and across the University to help develop positive long-term relationships with alumni who also become our corporate partners.

Jindal Connect/Comets Community

JindalConnect, known also as Comet’s Community is the official networking platform for JSOM alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends. Comets Community is a networking platform similar to LinkedIn but more personal. It gives members a way to connect with fellow graduates or re-connect with classmates to see what they have been up to and stay in touch.

Comets Community enables members to utilize the trusted Naveen Jindal School of Management – UT Dallas environment to expand their professional networks, build their careers, seek help from others or share wisdom about their companies, careers or classes they took as a student. Those who use it can leverage their professional network to get introduced to people they should know.

Comets Community features a directory of its more than 17,000 members. The platform also includes a business directory, job board and a mentoring site for both those who want to mentor and those who seek a mentor. Find a calendar of upcoming alumni events and photo albums of past alumni gatherings.

While the platform could serve as a social networking site, its professional component is what most students and alumni are eager to access.

Please see Giving to JSOM for more information on our donors, where to give and how to help.

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