Virginia Tech Alumni Association News - Fall 2002
An Interview with John Higginbotham '77
The New Alumni Association President
John Higginbotham has served the past five years on the Alumni Board of Directors and was elected in the spring to serve as president for 2002-03. John is Chairman & CEO of SpaceVest, a venture capital firm in Northern Virginia.
He resides with his family in Great Falls, Virginia. He grew up in Lewisburg, West Virginia, and attended Virginia Tech as a recipient of the prestigious Alumni Presidential Scholarship to study Engineering. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School following his undergraduate degree. During his career he was the first product manager for Hewlett Packard Company for microcomputers, a cofounder and senior manager of a global space insurance underwriting firm now owned by AXA Insurance Company, and active in community service. As a student he helped found the Student Alumni Associates, the student arm of the Alumni Association, and served as its first president during his senior year.
The following is a capsule of his responses to a few questions about the Alumni Association and its role in serving alumni and supporting the university.
Editor: How have you stayed connected to Virginia Tech through the years since graduating in the '70s?
JH: It has been my good fortune to have had opportunities to remain close to Virginia Tech over the past 25 years. The university has been an important source for continuing education, business opportunity, and social interaction. Class and Student Alumni Associates reunions, chapter events, conferences, seminars, and, of course, sporting events, have provided great venues to remain an active alumnus. It has been a privilege to serve on the Alumni Board in recent years, and is a special honor to serve as its president this year. I hope that I can help the Association continue to advance in its creative approach to serving our alumni across the U.S. and internationally.
Editor: How have the needs of our alumni changed from the point that you first became an alum?
JH: The nature of business, education, and social organizations has changed tremendously over recent years. Our Alumni Association needs to take that into account as it plans programs and services for ages ranging from the early twenties to senior alumni. Our alumni from the 1970s and earlier seem to prefer more traditional reunions and chapter events that have been part of our programs for decades. The younger graduates of the past 20 years or so seem to favor less formal events, more community service opportunities, and more family style programming. They also prefer the speed and brevity of Internet communications. Most who are married are working couples trying to balance career, family and leisure time. These demographics present challenges and opportunities to our Association.
Editor: How has this demographic change influenced alumni programs?
JH: Clearly, this divergence in needs and preferences has stimulated our Alumni Association Board and staff in consultation with the academic college deans and staffs to create different options for attracting alumni of all ages back to campus or offer community events through our alumni chapters. For the first time this year, the colleges are holding their own "Homecomings" throughout the home game football season to welcome their graduates. Another example of adapting some programs for younger alumni is the creation of "joint class reunions" where we cluster three consecutive classes for a reunion. This fall, three classes in the early '80s and three from the early '90s are invited back on the same weekend for a reunion. The price is modest and events are less formal in nature from the other traditional reunions for the '70s classes and older. We continue to look at other ways to capture the interest and participation of our more recent grads.
Editor: How is the Alumni Association employing technology to serve alumni?
JH: The consistent, practical use of technology at VT has impressed me a great deal. Tech is located in an "electronic village" environment created in the '90s as a prototype community. The university was among the first to require all students to have a personal computer for all majors. Therefore, we have very computer literate students and graduates. Our Alumni Association was one of the very first in the country to establish an on-line alumni community in the mid-90s that has grown to encompass more services via the Web. Alumni can access courses, some free, on-line. They can view and change their personal profile on-line. We deliver training materials to our volunteers using CD ROM. And most recently, we became the first alumni program to produce an informational CD ROM primarily for distribution to new graduates. This CD contains three complete videos, and many informative links to alumni programs and general university information on-line. Use of technology has been a high priority for Tom Tillar, who heads our Association staff. He and the staff have launched a number of initiatives with very limited budgetary resources over the past six or seven years. More are coming, and it is exciting to see our Association leading others in what is being developed to serve our alumni.
Editor: The new Alumni and Conference Center is closer to reality. How will that impact future programs and services for alumni?
JH: Our Board has been working toward the goal of a new center ever since I first joined it. It is tremendously exciting to see it evolve to the stage of nearly completing the fund raising and finalizing plans for the complex. I doubt that most alumni realize the scope of this project. It will be more than an alumni reception center - much, much more. The Alumni Center will be a very nice welcoming center with a museum, library, staff offices and an assembly hall for alumni events and volunteer training. The conference center will be spacious with ten major meeting rooms and a large ballroom to accommodate sizeable events - upwards of 700 participants. Program attendance will grow as our alumni population exceeds 200,000 in not too many years. Finally, the adjoining hotel will be modern and located in one of the most scenic areas of campus, convenient to Prices Fork Road. The number and range of programs for alumni will expand dramatically when we have this new facility open in a few years. It appears that 2005 is the target year for dedicating and opening the center.
Editor: Are there other issues that you feel our alumni should be concerned with in order to better assist the university?
JH: Yes, there are a few I would bring to the table. The reduction in resources available for higher education in Virginia is of particular concern. We need to keep education needs in front of our elected officials as they annually review requests from colleges and universities. We need to seize the opportunity to approve the proposed bond referendum this November to provide capital construction projects on Tech's campus and others. And we need to support our university financially to enable the higher dimension of quality that would not be possible through state support and tuition alone.
Another issue is the critical importance of research to strengthen business, industry, healthcare, and almost every area of society. Virginia Tech is a leading institution in the research arena, and it needs more help on many fronts to hold its ground and even advance. Alumni can help connect faculty to research resources, federal funds, general state support, and certainly private gifts. We need to be ever mindful of what we can do to help the university. More research will help create more faculty positions, more graduate student funding, and more discoveries that will ultimately provide economic benefits and improve the quality of life.
A third item I would mention is the increasing popularity of Virginia Tech among high school applicants. This is placing enormous pressure on the university to admit more students. But resources are just not there to grow beyond freshmen class sizes of about 4,600 each year. Many must be denied admission. Virginia Tech continues to be the most popular university in the state and maintains approximately 75 percent in-state enrollment. However, alumni and others must recognize the level of competition these days for Tech's programs. It is important to encourage students to apply, but also help them understand the double-edged sword nature of the problem - far more applicants than spaces available.
In any event, we can be proud of our university and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. I welcome any thoughts that alumni might have in regard to how our Alumni Association might more effectively serve the university and our alumni.