• George Washington University: 1,100+ full-time faculty; 25,000+ students; and 225,000+ alumni
• Harvard University:  1,900+ full-time faculty; 27,000+ students; and 360,000+ alumni
• The Ohio State University (main campus):  3,300+ full-time faculty; 55,000+ students; and 400,000+ alumni

As the largest constituency at most colleges, alumni present a formidable opportunity and challenge. The opportunity comes in the form of an expansive human network that can generate career connections, donations and positive word-of-mouth. One of the main challenges is that alumni are often rather geographically and psychologically detached from their alma mater.

Enter social media, a medium that, in theory, provides a wonderful platform to inform, engage, and inspire alumni.

Over the last few years, few individuals have paid more attention to how social media is shaping the interaction between universities and alumni than Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures (and former executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association).

ASMH recently connected with Andy, and he was good enough to share some of his thoughts about social media in alumni relations and higher education. Our questions and Andy’s responses have been edited for length and clarity.

ASMH: The personal and professional can commonly be blurred in social media. Do you think this is a threat or an opportunity for both the individuals and institutions involved?

AS: Great question. It’s so early in the development of our online social tools. I think we don’t yet have the easy controls we crave for managing the interplay of our private and our public identities. It’s not a threat per se, but it may mean that organizations and individuals get less utility out of their online interactions than they would if they had easier tools for managing their interactions.

I wrote a little about this aspect of social media on my blog last year. There are some really good reader comments there about this exact topic.

ASMH: Do you think it’s better for an organization to have a centralized or decentralized approach to social media in terms of both strategy and execution? Why?

AS: It depends a lot on the scale of the effort. A larger organization can get away with decentralized control, but it has to be strategically coordinated, which means you need leadership for the effort high up in the organization.

This is where many educational institutions may be lacking as yet – relatively few have vision for social media at the vice president level, for example. Charlene Li‘s book, Open Leadership, discusses this in some detail, and I think it would be great assigned reading for most executives in higher education.

ASMH: You have recently been conducting social media round tables with educational non-profits around the country. What are some of the major issues that continually come up in these sessions?

AS: The round tables are half-day gatherings of professionals from colleges, universities and also from independent schools. The most frequent issues revolve around a handful of questions, and I don’t think they’re unique to education at all:

• How do we measure the return on investment for social media?
• How can I overcome internal resistance to increasing resources for social media?
• How can I keep pace with the rapid pace of change in the technology itself?
• How can I meet the ever-increasing expectations of what social media can do for our organization?

I’ve been surprised at the one key question that I haven’t heard anyone ask yet, which is “What’s the single most valuable aspect of social media for me to understand?”

I try to make sure the round table discussions include some conversation about the human behavioral aspects of social media; ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether your alumni prefer Facebook over LinkedIn, or Twitter over Tumblr.

What matters is what they do when they’re online – how they interact and whether their activity gives you an opportunity to engage them in the life of your institution in a mutually beneficial way.

ASMH: You’ve been traveling abroad recently to speak at conferences and meet with international educators. Are the questions you get pertaining to social media the same around the globe?

AS: Non-U.S. institutions frequently are faced with stricter legal constraints related to individual privacy. This doesn’t necessarily prevent truly innovative uses of social tools, but I think it has a chilling effect on what’s considered an appropriate use.

I am guessing that legal hurdles will generate truly creative approaches to connecting with alumni and others. Also, the rise of tuition-based, private-style funding models overseas (for example, in the wake of England’s Browne Report), will increase the perceived need for American-style private fundraising, which in turn will require increased donor engagement of the type that social media can foster. But that’s a long-term vision, and I don’t think we’ll see an overseas institution take the lead in this area in the next couple of years.

However, as early as the start of 2009, about 70 percent of all Facebook profiles were from non-U.S. residents. This tool is increasingly important to global users, and this popularity will force our non-U.S. counterparts to start paying more attention to the expectations of online connectors.

ASMH: Alumni Futures recently turned four years old. Care to hazard a few predictions on what hot topics Alumni Futures will be covering in 2015?

AS: I’d be foolish to say anything specific, but I did try to provoke Alumni Futures readers into giving me their own opinions, with a recent article titled, 5 Long-Term ‘Ideas that Matter’ for Education.” (So far nobody has taken the bait, but I’m hoping some brave readers will share their own guesses).

Whatever the answer, I hope I’m still writing about all these things four years from now. I learn a lot from my readers and can gather my own thoughts more effectively when I’m writing them down for a diverse and critical audience.