For the past three years, Emory students have come together on Wednesday afternoons in an effort to improve student life, community, and collaborative efforts at Emory. Clubs, organizations, and causes set-up tables on Asbury Circle to promote their current projects, get some free publicity, and learn of opportunities for collaboration with other organizations.

Essentially, the new Wonderful Wednesday (I'm sure many alumni from 1982 and earlier fondly remember Wonderful Wednesdays when they were students) is a weekly networking celebration on Asbury Circle—just substitute light hors d’oeuvres for a free slice of pizza and business cards for free pens. What could be more natural than utilizing this weekly networking celebration to spread the work about E-Connection, Emory’s new online networking community, to students?

This past Wednesday, March 18, members of the Student Alumni Association (SAA) did just that. A team of dedicated SAA members invited their fellow students to learn more about Emory’s new online networking community and to set-up their own account on E-Connection. For students, E-Connection has the potential to be a hybrid—think Facebook meets LinkedIn with a LearnLink (Emory’s much-loved undergraduate email system) flair—I heard one student explain. Essentially, we are talking the professional community of a student’s dreams. The online community aspect this generation of student has never been with out, with the possibility for tremendous professionalism (re: no inappropriate pictures from Fraternity formals).

With the recent launch of E-Connection, the EAA has extended the collaborative work of programs such as Wonderful Wednesday to include alumni. Alumni might not be able to make it back to campus every week, but can hopefully find a spare moment in the day to sign into E-Connection and check for opportunities and confirm their latest friend requests.

--Megan Kruer 08C, 2008-09 fellow, Emory Annual Fund/Emory Alumni Association