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Today, DeGraw is the SAA’s Clubs Director, diligently managing and assisting 31 regional alumni clubs from northern California to Southwest Florida, from Boston to Tucson, as well as eight professional and affinity clubs.
Since he took the helm in 2004, the number of regional clubs has grown, older clubs have been reinvigorated, and two new types of clubs were established: the professional and affinity clubs. The professional clubs bring alumni who work in similar professions together to network and to learn about issues in their field. DeGraw also helped launch Affinity Clubs, which focus on an area of interest. Among them is SCNet (Stevens Career Network), founded by international career expert Gerry Crispin ’69 and meeting almost monthly to help alumni pursue their career goals. Another popular affinity club, the Fishing Club, was organized and is directed by Dick Magee ’63.
The newest area of club activities involves the online SAA communities of LinkedIn, the professional and social networking site; StevensConnect, the social networking site; and the SAA’s Facebook page (See sidebar on pg. 33). SAA Treasurer Vicky Velasco ’04 manages StevensConnect and the SAA’s Facebook page.
All of this, and DeGraw wasn’t even supposed to stay on the job long when he came on board in 2004. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” DeGraw says, in his quiet and unassuming way.
Just five years ago, many of the alumni clubs were inactive, and no one was really doing much to revive them. DeGraw bemoaned this fact to SAA leaders.
“I complained and they said: ‘Stop complaining: You fix it!’ ” he says with a smile, during a recent interview. Nearing retirement from his work as a manufacturer’s representative, he decided to take up the challenge. It’s been a good fit.
DeGraw reports that among the most active regional clubs are the Stevens Metropolitan Club, the West Coast Florida Club and the Raleigh, N.C., Club, which meet faithfully each month; the Southeast and Central Florida clubs; and the North Jersey Club, which this summer held its fifth annual and very popular minor league baseball outing with the New Jersey Jackals. The Baltimore Club is also very active, and among the professional clubs, the Pharmaceutical Club boasts the most members.
Looking toward the future, DeGraw says that he’s hoping to strengthen regional clubs overall and is working with interested alumni in Western New York and Maine to start clubs there. Earlier this year, alumni launched the Phoenix and Tucson clubs.
SAA clubs have also worked to offer more support to Stevens students. DeGraw assisted students and staff involved with Stevens’ new pre-law program to connect them with alumni attorneys at a networking event last year, and SAA clubs have also connected student members of Habitat for Humanity to alumni near their home building sites, and members of the Yacht Club and Tau Beta Pi with interested alumni.
Then there are the club stalwarts. The Old Guard Club was founded in 1965 to include members who are alumni of Stevens of 50 years or more; the club’s twice a year luncheons are highly popular. And the Stevens Metropolitan Club has been meeting for lunch every month since October 1939. This venerable club—a strong financial supporter of Stevens—once met in Midtown Manhattan; among its designated luncheon spots were a university clubhouse on West 56th Street, and the Chemists’ Club on East 41st Street. Today, the club continues its lively monthly meetings, mostly at Hoboken restaurants.
Under DeGraw’s tutelage, alumni clubs have offered a wide variety of activities, from the social and professional to the unusual. Besides the fun baseball outings and various “Meet & Greet” and networking events, alumni have met to play a few games of Whirlyball (a mix of lacrosse, hockey and basketball, with bumper cars), enjoyed an oompah band during an Oktoberfest, savored a scotch tasting at the Newark Club and boarded a boat on the Hudson for an autumn leaves tour along the river.
Stevens alumni clubs have certainly transformed throughout the years and have been influenced by economic changes nationwide, DeGraw says. As certain regions grow, they may see a surge of Stevens alumni moving there, and more alumni clubs, while other areas lose population.
An old photograph in the Alumni Office is revealing. It shows a gathering of the First Conference of the Associated Stevens Alumni Clubs, held on Jan. 10, 1914. The conference-goers are all men, of course (Stevens didn’t go co-ed until 1971), and hold a huge flag that lists the many Stevens club chapters of the time: European, Newark, Brooklyn, Southern, Western, Schenectady, Pittsburgh, Japan.
As alumni clubs fully embrace the 21st century, DeGraw, a true Stevens man, seems very capable of reaching several generations of alumni, with wry humor, graciousness and an engineer’s knack for organization.
His background is classic Stevens. DeGraw, who earned an M.B.A. from Rutgers University, worked for a number of years as a project engineer and later in product/market and strategic planning and new product development, including 16 years with American Standard, Inc. He later served as president of his own company, Automation Systems, Inc., before retiring. He and his wife, Helen, live in Montvale, N.J., and have three children and eight grandchildren, including triplet grandsons.
When asked why he has made alumni clubs his next challenge after a long career, DeGraw likes to refer to the SAA’s mission statement, which says, in part, that clubs exist “to establish, maintain, and cultivate among its members a sentiment of regard for one another and of attachment to Stevens Institute of Technology, and to promote in every way the interests of the Institute.”
“It’s the roadmap that I run by,” he says.
“This is no one-man shop, and only works due to the volunteer club leaders and the entire SAA staff who make the meetings happen.”
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