Oleh Duma, a co-founder of Lviv Polytechnic Alumni Club, paid a visit to the Alumni office at Kingston University London. They talked about the experience of this university and the innovations of Lviv Polytechnic in cooperation with graduates.
– How did you manage to get in touch with a university in distant London?
– As part of the British Council Creative Spark project, I paid a visit to Kingston University London. Since we established the Club of Polytechnic Alumni, I got interested in the experience of Kingston University with its graduates, as a source of ideas for the development of our Club. The idea of creating a Club in Lviv Polytechnic was drawn from the experience of British and American universities.
– What is interesting in the Alumni office at Kingston?
– Eleanor Luker, the Head of the Alumni office, told us about ways of interaction as well as which goals and motivations encourage Kingston graduates to be of value to their native university and its students.
At Kingston University, first of all they think how university can be useful to graduates. Thus there is the idea of life-long alumni cooperation. All graduates of Kingston University have free lifelong access to university lectures and libraries, and this is a truly valuable bonus. The office building has the so-called Alumni space – a conference room that graduates can use to organize business meetings and hold working group discussions and meetings.
– What experience of Lviv Polytechnic Alumni Club was of interest to Kingston University?
– First of all, Eleanor Luker was captured with the idea of loyalty program of our Alumni Club. There is no such a bonus at Kingston University. She was interested in technical aspects of creating a loyalty program at Polytechnic Alumni Club: how to choose partners, legal registration of cooperation, quality control in the loyalty program and some organizational aspects of monitoring.
Another aspect, which was of interested to Alumni office at Kingston, was the personal card of the Club member. This idea is likely to be implemented at Kingston in the near future. However, Mz Luker wants to attach to a graduate card a chip to access university library and some laboratories. We will be happy if our ideas and experience are useful to Alumni office at Kingston.