The Annual BUILD Snapshot: Tracking Alumni Outcomes

Abstract

As the number of alumni of the CSULB BUILD Student Training Program continues to grow, it has become vital to develop a systematic way to track each trainee’s graduate school enrollment and persistence. Developing a system that tracks post-graduate outcomes is not only important for determining the success of the program, but it also creates opportunities for the program to continue supporting its former trainees. A major challenge to tracking is that alumni are not very engaged in the process. To address this challenge, we developed the Annual BUILD Snapshot, a personalized unique Excel file designed to collect information on student activities during their time in the BUILD Program and after graduation. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of the Annual BUILD Snapshot. We also discuss the strategies we used to launch the Snapshot, the administration process, and the outcomes and lessons learned from the process. Our findings have implications for similar training programs that need to track the short-term and long-term outcomes of their students and aim to remain connected to their alumni in unique and creative ways.