Smith College School for Social Work, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development records
Scope and Contents
This collection contains the records of the Smith College School for Social Work, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development. The collection documents the office's work in three main areas: alumni affairs, development, and continuing education.
Alumni Affairs files document the services the office provided to alumni, including maintaining alumni biographical files, offering workshops and trainings on job applications, planning reunions and anniversaries, and providing support for alumni regional chapters and networking. Alumni Affairs also includes files related to fundraising from alumni for the 1918 Fellowship and the Annual Fund. In addition to these, there is also documentation of the office's work to found the Social Work Archive, in partnership with the Smith College Special Collections, to document the history of the school and the field. Administrative records of the office include Alumni Executive Committee records, correspondence, and collected Alumni Association and School for Social Work publications.
Development files document the office's grant writing and grant administration work. Files related to the Continuing Education program include course plans, information of faculty, and planning records.
Dates of Materials
- 1918 - 2009
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
Materials in the Smith College Archives are open for use, with the following exceptions: "Office Files," files of records created for the use of the administrative unit that created them, are closed to research for a period of 10 years following their creation.
Faculty tenure and promotion files, as well as inactive faculty files are closed permanently.
Board of Trustees' records are closed permanently.
Minutes of the Faculty Council are closed to all except current Smith College Faculty for a period of 75 years following their creation.
Student academic records, student disciplinary records, and all records containing FERPA-covered student information are closed during the lifetime of the student. Student records created 100 years or more ago are assumed to be about deceased students.
In all cases, the College Archives will continue to provide public access to materials that were intended to be public at the time of their creation (press releases, publications, etc.)
Conditions Governing Use
Smith College retains copyright of materials created as part of its business operations; however, copyright in other items in this collection may be held by their respective creators. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For instances which may regard materials in the collection not created by Smith College, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.
Biographical / Historical
The Smith College School for Social Work, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development aims to keep alumni connected to the School and to each other, provide professional development opportunities and resources for alumni, and fundraise for the School. All graduates of the School for Social Work are members of the Alumni Network of the School for Social Work and the Alumnae/Alumni Association of Smith College. The Office of Alumni Relations and Development works in concert with the Alumni Leadership Council and the School for Social Work.
The Office is responsible for alumni and external relations, alumni chapters, fundraising from alumni, grant writing and administration, and the alumni biographical files. Alumni Affairs oversees the reunions, including the first reunion that took place in 1953. They also publish InDepth, the biannual magazine of Smith College School for Social Work which features the work and research of faculty and alumni.
The office has had many names over time, including the Office of Graduate Enrollment and Alumni Affairs (1975-2000), External Affairs and Continuing Education (2000), and Alumni Affairs and Development. The change in names reflect a gradual shift in the responsibilities of the office, since there have been time periods when the office was responsible for overseeing the Continuing Education program and a resource center for career development and job skills. Today, the office continues to provide professional development resources for alumni, including an online community, special events, career counseling, and job listings. However, much of the Continuing Education program has been relocated to the Office of the Registrar.
Extent
70.147 linear feet (81 containers)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
This collection contains the records of the Smith College School for Social Work, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development. The records document the office's work on alummni relations, alumni chapters, fundraising from alumni, grant writing and administration, the alumni biographical files, training and resource sharing related to alumni job placement, and the Continuing Education program.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into 3 series. All series are arranged alphabetically.
Series:
- Alumni Affairs
- Development
- Continuing Education
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
As a preservation measure, researchers must use digital copies of audiovisual materials in this collection. Please consult with Special Collections staff or email specialcollections@smith.edu to request the creation of and access to digital copies.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by the Office of Alumni Affairs and Development, starting in 1989.
Appraisal
During processing in 2021, archivists removed records related to individual alumni donors, research about possible grant funds, rejected grant applications, personnell records like job searches and time sheets, and surveys and questionnaires from the collection. Anonymized reports about individual giving and surveys were retained.
Processing Information
In 2021, the processing archivist, Madison White, broke the School for Social Work records into several smaller collections, including this one. Records that had originally been received from the Office of Alumni Affairs and Development were moved into this seperate collection. Once the new collection was created, the existing description of the contents of various accessions were imported and arranged into three series.
While the description has been arranged into 3 series, the physical content of the boxes were not moved, i.e. groups of materials that came to the archive together and were placed in the same box have been kept together. Box contents, however, were weeded for restricted and non-permanent records, and the description was corrected to match the new contents.
- Bulletins
- Career development
- Continuing education
- Financial records
- Grant proposals
- Newsletters
- Smith College -- Alumni and alumnae.
- Smith College -- Fund raising
- Smith College. School for Social Work -- Administration
- Smith College. School for Social Work. Office of Alumni Affairs and Development
- Social case work -- Study and teaching
- Universities and colleges -- Alumni and alumnae
- administrative records
- correspondence
- grants
Source
- Title
- Finding Aid to the Smith College School for Social Work, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development records
- Status
- Minimum Finding Aid (Completed)
- Author
- Madison White
- Date
- 2021
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Finding aid is written in English.
Revision Statements
- 2021-2-15: Created a new collection
Repository Details
Part of the Smith College Archives Repository
