Citizen Alum is a new project that seeks to define college alumni not as givers (of cash) but as doers–as people who help to educate college students, children, and everyone else. The activists behind Citizen Alum include Julie Ellison, the American Studies professor who played a leading role in launching Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, and other excellent colleagues.

At CIRCLE, most of our work aims to engage people who do not happen to hold college degrees: still a clear majority. (Forty-two percent of current youth do not even enter college, let alone finish it to become alumni.) But alumni have great potential, and I like the idea of redefining their roles with new language and new activities and events.