Dear AUP alumni community,

I hope this note finds all of you well and thriving at each of the four corners of the globe.

We’re a month into the new semester at AUP, and a stellar group of new graduate students has just joined us on campus, along with an entering undergraduate class as diverse as ever. This fall the Voice of America covered our Orientation week, bringing news of our university to 18 million people.

This academic year, we are in the midst of two major projects at AUP—Middle States re-accreditation, and the implementation of an enterprise system that will permit paperless admissions, a self-service Student Information System, online registration (at last), as well as a single admissions-to-alumni database for the University. On the academic front, we’ve opened two new Master of Arts programs—a Master’s in Cultural Translation and a Master’s in Cross-Cultural and Sustainable Business Management—and established a new academic partnership with the Eugene Lang College of The New School in New York City. Students and faculty will soon be moving between Paris and New York.

The biggest news I bring to you as an alumna/us is that in the coming weeks we will be unveiling “AUP Alumni Online,” a one-stop, social networking site for AUP alumni and former students. It will include the latest alumni community and campus news in real time, career development support and job postings, search engines permitting you to find other alumni by geographical region, job category, and name or class, event information and registration, ongoing appeal and Annual Fund information, and a News & Media section that will update you on AUP alumni in the press and link you to sites that we think will be of interest to you. We’ll be sending you an email as soon as we go live: please join quickly, update all your profile information, and encourage other AUP alumni with whom you are regularly in touch to join. Creating an online community for alumni has been a dream of mine since I took office – every time two of you get together anywhere in the world it’s a great thing for AUP.

As we begin to transmit news to you on a regular basis, we’ll be producing a shortened version of the AUP Magazine and presenting it to you online to save on international shipping costs and to uphold our commitment to the environment. The money we save will go directly to academic initiatives on campus. Please let us know how you like these changes, and how they are serving you.

My priorities this year include renovating AUP’s campus and raising money for scholarships so that we can increasingly diversify our student body.

Last year saw the refurbishment of the Grand Salon and student lounges, as well as the Combes and Bosquet entryways, and this year we’ll continue in that vein. Pending authorization by the Mairie, we’ll also be putting up blue and silver banners on all of our 7th arrondissement buildings. It will be nice to see AUP’s campus profile rise so visibly and elegantly in our quartier.

Scholarships are at the heart of who we are at AUP, and who we will be in the years to come. It’s important to me that cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, and representation of 100 nationalities be matched by socio-economic diversity as well. We have been increasing our “AUP Scholar Awards”—up to 75% of tuition fully paid—for highly qualified, meritorious students in recent years. But all students, under the conditions of the present financial crisis, are feeling the crunch. We’ve raised our work/study (community grants), and the Coup de Pouce scholarship fund that supports students attending class study trips. You can sponsor an AUP Scholar for four years, or contribute directly to initiatives such as Coup de Pouce. Please make a donation to the Annual Fund specifying which of these initiatives you would like to support, student scholarships or our “Campus in the 7th Fund”. If you would like to learn more about how you can support an AUP Scholar, find out about our current appeals, and how to donate to the Annual Fund, simply click here or email advancement@aup.edu.

As I’ve said many times, it is the participation of alumni in AUP’s future that is critical, not the sum you send in. Please do not ever feel embarrassed to send a small check to support a scholarship student. You simply cannot imagine how heartening it is to faculty, staff, and students on campus to receive such support, indeed testimony to the work they do, from alumni and former students. I count on each of you to be an active participant this year—in “AUP Alumni Online”, in AUP networks and events all over the world, and in generous giving to your alma mater.

I am looking forward to seeing you in Paris next spring at the 2010 Global Alumni Weekend, and, in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to send me your feedback, comments, and suggestions to alumni@aup.fr which are always welcome and much appreciated.

Taking AUP forward every day, with your help,

Celeste Schenck

President

president@aup.fr