Reunion 2016 Recap

Reunion 2016 was quite the celEPHbration, with over 1850 alumni, 475 kids, and 2975 total people descending on the Purple Valley. The campus was peppered with 12 tents, 50 orange-shirt clad Reunion Rangers, 743 purple, yellow and cow print balloons, and 2,550 bagged lunches in purple reusable totes (that proved to be a highlight of the weekend). Despite rain on Saturday morning, the sun shone brightly later in the day as nearly 30% of the Ephs in classes in the 1s and 6s celebrated Reunion 2016.

View, download and share Reunion 2016 photos.

Watch alumni presentations from the Reunion 2016 seminars.

Review the weekend line-up in the full Reunion 2016 program.

The following awards and announcements were presented at the annual meeting of The Society of Alumni on Saturday, June 11:

Oldest alum in attendance was Jerry Langeler, class of 1936!

In recent years, this honor has gone to Wayne Wilkins and Frank Bush from the class of 1941.  This year, Wilk and Frank are joined by classmates Jim Case and Pete Parish as they all celebrate their 75th reunion!

Major Awards

William P. Bowden ’66 received the Rogerson Cup, the college’s highest award for alumni service. Robert J. Rubin ’66 won the Kellogg Award for lifetime career achievement. The Thurston Bowl, for exceptional service as class secretary, was presented to Peter James McEntegart ’91, Ramona Liberoff ’91 and Christine W. Choi ’91, and the Copeland Award, for effectively representing Williams to prospective students, went to Mary Moule ’91 . The Joseph’s Coat, in recognition of a highly esteemed member of a post-50th Reunion class, went to Calvin A. Campbell, Jr. ’56.

New Members of the Executive Committee of the Society of Alumni

Jordan Grace Hampton ’87 (President), Belmont, MA; Thomas D. Gardner ’79 (Vice President), Bedford, NY; M. John Storey ’65, Williamstown, MA; Vidisha A. Patel ’85, Sarasota, FL; Anna Butters Tanner ’91, Duluth, GA; Vikas Lunia ’94, Dallas, TX; Geraldine Shen ’01, Williamstown, MA, Ifiok C. Inyang ’11, Washington, DC; and Susan E. Akin ’84 and Tracy J. Heilman ’88, both ex officio as Alumni Fund Co-Chairs.

Class Attendance Awards

The Reunion Trophy, awarded to the class with the highest percentage of registered and present classmates, went to the Class of 2011 with 53.4% in attendance. The Reunion Bowl, for the class with the greatest number of members registered and present, went to the Class of 2011, with 282 members attending.

Philanthropy

The Class of 1966’s 50th Reunion gift came to $12.12M, of which $7.51M was raised to support its two class gift purposes – “The Class of 1966 Environmental Center” and the “Summer Opportunities Fund” – and $1.47M was raised in Alumni Fund gifts and pledges. Nearly 86% of the class made a gift that counted toward the overall total.

Class of 1966 Environmental Center

The ’66 Environmental Center (EC) is a living demonstration of sustainability at the center of campus, informing and inspiring learning and conduct for the Williams community and beyond. Opened in February 2015 as a renovation and expansion of the 200-year-old Kellogg House, the building was designed and built to meet the most ambitious sustainable design standard today, the Living Building Challenge. The EC is home to Environmental Studies and the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and brings these two programs together in a building that models creative solutions to complex, real-world challenges. To achieve prestigious Living Building status, the building must operate as a net-zero user of both energy and water and must use only non-toxic, locally-sourced sustainable materials in its construction and operation.

Summer Opportunities Fund

A key goal of the Teach It Forward campaign is to support powerful learning experiences outside of the classroom – including being able to fund a transformative summer opportunity for every student, especially those on financial aid. Part of the current gap is financial and part is the availability of high-quality opportunities. Currently, most experiences supported by Williams are in the public service or nonprofit world or on-campus in research. Beyond simply expanding current programming, however, the Class of 1966’s shared long-term vision with college leaders is to make the program world-class. That vision includes actively engaging alumni across classes and across generations to help “inside source” high quality internships and other summer opportunities and to do so in both the non-profit and the for-profit worlds. A robust Summer Opportunities program with a significant role for alumni to forge strong connections in a variety of sectors through the Williams Career Center and other campus departments will be a win-win for students, alumni, and the communities they serve.

The Class of 1991’s 25th Reunion gift reached just over $5M with 73.7% of the class participating in this effort.  Within this, $510,000 was focused on the Class of 1991 Scholarship and $308,000 was focused on the Alex Howard ’91 Memorial Scholarship.  In addition, 1991 raised a total of $1.162M for the Alumni Fund in gifts and pledges.

Director of Annual Giving Laura Day ’04 announced that, overall, 1,600 volunteers had raised over $11M from more than 14,000 alumni in 2015-2016.