Abstract
Individuals that have graduated from an educational institution become so-called alumni of the institution. The institution then tries to stay in contact with the alumni for two main purposes. It is important to facilitate continued communication between different members of the alumni and to use those connections to elicit donations. Thus, an alumni organization is formed to fulfill those purposes. This organization is led by a board that is mainly formed of alumni volunteers. The institution provides an office on campus with office staff to aid the alumni organization and help in running it.
The aim of this thesis is to view the alumni organization through the lens of social network where the nodes of the network are the alumni and the links being the social connections that are identified from a specially designed survey, social network sites and other sources of information. This network is analyzed to identify the most important actors in the network, the nodes closest to all other nodes, and other necessary measures elicited from the network.
This information might help inform the alumni office in assessing their efforts while arranging alumni events to improve the social adhesions of the alumni. The results present some interesting data that will be shared with the Alumni Office. The resulting data might help the Alumni Office in their planning for future events.
