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Show When you get to thinking that the University student body is big, try to imagine a group almost seven times that size and spread over the whole world, not just the 482 acres that make up the campus. Just keeping track of them is a gargantuan task; trying to keep them pleasantly mindful of the University by giving them a wide variety of educational, cultural, social . . . and just plain fun . . . activities is the even bigger job that falls to the University of Utah Alumni Association.The year is a big one for a staff that finds itself hopelessly small, separately housed, and frequently traveling. But the UUAA is a nerve center for more than 62,000 former students who are directly responsible for giving several hundred thousand dollarsto the school each year and who add much to its prestige as they assume leadership in their professions almost everywhere they settle.How does the Alumni Association keep busy? In the fall, it's Homecoming, which is marked by class reunions, participation in several student-staged phases of the celebration and, during the last two years, the annual Homecoming Lecture Series. Last fall's lectures ranged from a combo-backed talk by Dr. William L. Fowler on the basic fundamentals of music to a much-heralded statement on The Fabric of Liberty by Dr. J. D. Williams.In Winter Quarter, the UUAA takes official note of the school's birthday with the annual Founders Day Banquet, held as nearFebruary 28th as crowded calendars will permit. Dr. G. Homer Durham, President of Arizona State University and a former Academic Vice President of the "U", spoke this year. Another highlight: presentation of Distinguished Alumni Awards to four outstanding former students: Dr. Alex G. Oblad, Dr. Leon L. Watters, Mrs. Ardella Bitner Tibby, and Mrs. Helen Spencer Williams.Alumni parties also are held by many of the far-flung chapters of the Alumni Association under long-range, and sometimes personal, supervision of the central office.Three events dot the UUAA's Spring calendar. First comes the annual Alumni-Varsity football game, which climaxes spring practice and produces some of the season's most colorful foot-ball . . . along with some above-board athletic scholarship money.Next, the Emeritus Club inducts its newest class at an annual banquet where nostalgia and hard work for the school are both much in evidence.Finally, all graduating seniors are honored on the Saturday before Commencement at the annual Senior Supper Dance, a colorful and pleasant introduction into the Alumni Association . . . which is likely to be dues-free from the Class of 1962 on.And, six times a year the UUAA publishes, with a one-man staff, a magazine that has twice (in five and one-half years) won its spurs as the best of the 24 alumni publications in the Mountain States.369 |