The success of its graduates is an important gauge of the Kroc Institute’s effectiveness. Documenting and fostering the graduates’ impact on the world is the job of Anne Hayner, who became director of alumni affairs in June of 2004. For the previous seventeen years, she was administrator of the M.A. program. As a result, she knows each of its 388 alumni personally.

Hayner’s efforts to foster a robust alumni presence on the institute’s web site met with an enthusiastic response. The institute now boasts what may be, among peace and conflict programs, the most extensive on-line accounting of alumni occupations and contact information.

The web pages were launched in May 2004 to provide career news and e-mail addresses of M.A. in peace studies graduates. At first, it included information about 165 alumni, or 42 percent of Kroc graduates. By May of 2005, information was listed for 275 alumni—70 percent of students who graduated since the first M.A. class of 1988.

The list allows the Kroc Institute to answer with authority one of its most frequently asked questions: “What do you do with a peace studies degree?” A small sample of job descriptions illustrates the diverse career paths: conflict resolution specialist, psychotherapist, human rights officer, physician, grant writer, professor of political science, managing editor, development director, playwright, chief executive officer, and foreign news editor. The names of alumni employers are also enlightening. Among them: the United Nations Development Program, Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, the Washington Kurdish Institute, the Social Investment Forum, the Uganda Human Rights Commission, the AIDS Law Project.

Some students bring to the M.A. program professional training in fields such as medicine or law or architecture. After graduation, they find creative ways to apply to their careers new understandings of peace and justice, human rights and development. Some alumni have taken enhanced peacebuilding skills and perspectives back to institutions they worked for before coming to Notre Dame, such as a Siberian university and a Kenyan peace organization. Half of Kroc graduates eventually do further graduate work in fields as diverse as law, international relations, public health, education, business, and theology.

The alumni network continually proves its usefulness. Graduates share job announcements, political news, and teaching resources via the alumni listserve. Alumni have used the network to connect with other graduates during travels to such places as Egypt, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan. Karmela Devcic (’02), foreign news editor for the largest Croatian weekly, linked up with other alumni while reporting about Indonesia after the tsunami. When Chicago Public Radio sought sources for a story on Chilean elections, Hayner used the network to connect the journalists with several Chilean alumni. And when Catia Confortini (’96) sought help for Rwandan refugees who were stranded in Uganda with six children and no food, Kroc graduates in that country responded with the names of people and agencies that could help the family.

Hayner uses e-mail to keep alumni updated on major events, new faculty members and other Kroc Institute news. She also alerts them to the presence of alumni who are visiting their communities, or attending conferences, such as the one coordinated by Vandy Kanyako (’03) on Civil Society’s Role in the Prevention of Armed Conflict, held at United Nations headquarters in July 2005.

Thanks to their network, alumni were able to communicate with current students as they were preparing for internships in the expanded M.A. program. Hayner linked students in the class of 2006 with alumni who reside in, or hail from, internship sites in East Africa, Southeast Asia, South Africa, Israel/Palestine, Washington, Atlanta, and New York.

Building on Hayner’s efforts, the institute launched two initiatives that recognize distinctive contributions by alumni to peacebuilding scholarship and practice. In fall of 2004, the Kroc Institute established the Distinguished Alumni Award and Lecture. The first honoree was Emil Bolongaita (’89), deputy chief of party and senior governance advisor of the Rule of Law Effectiveness Program of the United States Agency for International Development in the Philippines. After accepting his award, Emil gave a talk titled “The Enemy Within: Challenging Corruption in Post-Conflict Countries” to advisory council members, faculty, students, and members of the Notre Dame community. The institute published a version of “The Enemy Within” as an occasional paper in 2005.

Bolongaita also inaugurated the Kroc alumni visiting fellows program, returning to Notre Dame in June and July of 2004 to continue his research and writing about corruption. Michelle Parlevliet (’95), a Dutch citizen and former manager of the Human Rights and Conflict Management Programme at the Center for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, was awarded an alumni visiting fellowship for March through May of 2005. During that time, Parlevliet explored strategies for integrating human rights and peacebuilding perspectives.

Plans for improving the alumni program include establishing a mentor program to link students with alumni; increasing connections among alumni based on regional involvement or areas of professional work; and streamlining communications with and among alumni by improvements in the alumni listserv.

Although the alumni program was launched with a focus on M.A. graduates, the institute also hopes to expand connections with and among alumni of the undergraduate peace studies program.

Career updates and other alumni information is available at http://kroc.nd.edu/alumni

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