By Karen Feldscher

Kevin is sitting in a fluorescent-lit room in Richards Hall, munching on a sandwich. A 1976 recipient of a master's degree in actuarial science who now runs his own consulting business, he's been asked back to campus to participate in a focus group.

Northeastern wants to know what Kevin thinks about the alma mater he left nearly three decades ago. A place that has since undergone what most agree is a swift and remarkable makeover—from a blue-collar, commuter, "safety" school, to a more selective, academically rigorous, residential, and visually appealing university that attracts students from all over the world.

Kevin and the seven others in the focus group are asked if they feel connected to Northeastern.

There's a brief pause. Then Kevin says, "Why should I feel connected?"

It's a definite "ouch" moment for anyone who cares about Northeastern. But those who fall within that category—administrators, faculty, loyal groups of alumni, the university's trustees, some current students—are hoping to find ways of getting the ambivalent Kevins out there more engaged with their school.

Certainly, there are plenty of alumni who feel more of a connection than Kevin. Like Kathryn (Sharpe) Zimmerman, LA'75, and her husband, Theodore, BA'74, who still hang out with their Northeastern buddies at Husky hockey, football, and baseball games.

Or like Allen Lomax, LA'77—past president and current executive vice president of the Alumni Association, and president of the Washington, D.C., alumni club. "Every positive thing that's happened in my life traces back to Northeastern," says Lomax, who met his wife and his best friend through NU and whose co-op jobs with the federal government led to his long career at the Government Accountability Office, where he works on strategic planning and performance measurement.

But a lack of engagement is definitely a problem among many Northeastern graduates. According to preliminary results from a recent alumni survey, only about 13 percent feel "definitely connected" to the university. About 58 percent feel "somewhat connected."

And some alums are uncomfortable with the thought of Northeastern's becoming a different place than they recall from twenty, thirty, or forty years ago.

"The alumni we are trying to reach have their own unique experiences and perceptions of Northeastern," says Robert Cunningham, senior vice president for institutional advancement. "They are physically, emotionally, and psychologically invested in the version of Northeastern they knew, and either loved, or didn't, or fell somewhere in between."

He adds, "It's not uncommon for an institution that's changing to have alumni who view current students as different from themselves. And they want to see similarities—people like them who are being given the same experiences and opportunities they had."

Why is it so important to Cunningham and his colleagues to figure out ways of getting alumni to care more about Northeastern? They acknowledge that money is one major reason. Northeastern is currently winding up a $200 million capital campaign. Fundraising is essential to the progress of any university, particularly in today's ultra-competitive arena.

But administrators want much more than just dollars. They want alumni to feel connected to the university in a deeper way than ever before because, they say, a strong Northeastern depends on it. Alumni are the university's best ambassadors, say officials. Their successes showcase the value of a Northeastern education. They can recruit applicants, provide co-op and job opportunities. And they form a powerful network that all alums may tap into throughout their lives.

That's why officials are keen to reenergize the base. "What we want to do is emphasize the similarity between Northeastern then and now," says College of Arts and Sciences dean James Stellar. "Because, presumably, alumni care about this.

"I mean," Stellar continues, "don't you want to know whom the Red Sox are going to get to replace Curt Schilling if he retires? If it's your team, you're going to be interested in what we're doing here."

Unmistakable signs of growth

So Cunningham and others are overseeing a host of efforts to bring alumni back home. Better forms of communication. Better activities and events. Better programming and affinity groups that serve particular interests or backgrounds. Plans for a new alumni center on campus. Plus, Cunningham has just filled a new position: vice president for alumni relations.

An online alumni survey—Kevin's focus group and several others provided a test run for the questions—was launched over the summer to pinpoint perceptions about Northeastern, to keep both alumni relations and marketing and communications efforts in sync with the needs of nearly 167,000 graduates. A random sampling of alumni were either e-mailed or snail-mailed about the survey. The university is hoping for 3,000 to 4,000 responses, says marketing and communications vice president Brian Kenny, who worked with Cunningham on the project. (As of early August, around 2,500 responses had been received.)

"We need the support, engagement, and investment of our alumni to succeed as a private university," Cunningham explains.

Robert Marini, E'54, H'97, puts it more bluntly. The former chairman of Camp Dresser & McKee, Marini once served as vice chair of Northeastern's board of trustees and ran an earlier NU fundraising campaign—so he knows a little bit about fostering interest in the university.

"People are not going to give money to something they're not involved in," he says. "You can't just look to get into people's pockets. You need to look for opinions and thoughts to keep your school innovative. And when people get involved, they change their view."

Most alumni are aware of at least some of the particulars of the Northeastern transformation, which have been widely reported by such major media outlets as the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The statistics are impressive, indeed. Between 1990 and 2005, the average incoming-freshman SAT score jumped from 950 to 1224. In the same period, the school's acceptance rate improved from 94 percent to 47 percent (more than 25,460 applications came in this year for 2,800 freshman spots). And the graduation rate leapt from an anemic 39 percent to a much more respectable 61 percent.

Such figures, combined with numbers related to faculty and financial resources, last year propelled Northeastern into the top half of the U.S. News & World Report ranking of American colleges and universities for the first time in the school's history. President Richard Freeland has often said he wants Northeastern to move into the ranks of the U.S. News "top 100" schools.

In 2004, U.S. News placed Northeastern at 120 (out of 248 national research universities), up from 162 in 1995. And in this year's ranking, announced in mid-August, Northeastern jumped up to the 115 spot, boosted in large part

by improvements in student selectivity—the acceptance rate dropped from 47 to 42 percent between 2003 and 2004—and freshman retention, which increased from 84 to 86 percent.

The campus has undergone dramatic physical changes, too. Between 1990 and 2004, the university erected a phalanx of eye-catching state-of-the-art buildings, including engineering/science, computer science, and health sciences facilities; a recreation center; and a classroom building.

To further improve the campus experience, Northeastern has built nine new residence halls and is working on the tenth. Currently, 51 percent of undergraduates—roughly 7,300 students, more than double the number fifteen years ago—live in on-campus housing, many of them in dorms that have won top architectural awards. University officials hope to eventually house 75 percent of undergraduates.

Other perceptible differences aren't as quantifiable. Like professor emeritus of electrical engineering Arvin Grabel's observation that today's students frequently sport Northeastern T-shirts, jackets, and sweatshirts. "Before, you saw them wearing stuff from other schools," he notes wryly.

A major public milestone was reached in August 2003, when the Boston Globe ran a lengthy story titled "A Higher Grade," which detailed Northeastern's improvements and proclaimed it "a hot school."

What a turnaround for a place that, a mere dozen years earlier, was often thought of as a second-choice university.

Questions about access

Many alums are proud of the new, more prestigious Northeastern, believing a rising tide lifts all boats. Says Paula Ficarra Krapf, AS'87, "Because Northeastern is raising its profile and its image, it has more cachet. For those of us who got degrees twenty or so years ago, there's now more value to our diploma because more people have heard of the college."

"A big job for Northeastern," adds president emeritus John A. Curry, LA'56, ME'60, H'96, "is to convince alumni, as we continue to drive toward the top 100, that their diploma is worth more because of the qualitative changes at Northeastern."

In spite of the soaring stats and positive press, however, there are clearly a percentage of alumni who are, in varying degrees, uncomfortable with the "smaller and better" Northeastern, born in the early 1990s in the face of severe fiscal woes.

Some alumni who question Northeastern's current direction wonder if the school is becoming elitist, perhaps forgetting "the little guy" who came to Huntington Avenue when grades or lack of money kept him out of other Boston-area schools.

Former trustee vice-chairman George Kariotis, E'44, H'88, was himself one of those little guys. The son of immigrant parents and a first-generation college student, Kariotis could barely manage the $125-per-semester tuition in 1940.

"Frankly, I couldn't have afforded $150," he says. "I got a $100 scholarship that allowed me to start. Every semester, I'd go see Dean [Harold] Melvin, the dean of students, and he'd give me another $100. Northeastern was a school that a blue-collar poor kid could go to and get a good education—and good experience to go along with it."

One of Northeastern's many success stories, Kariotis went on to found Alpha Industries, a manufacturer of components for wireless communications; served as the Massachusetts secretary of economic affairs from 1979 to 1983; and ran for governor of Massachusetts against Michael Dukakis in 1986. In 1981, in recognition of a significant gift, Northeastern named a classroom building Kariotis Hall.

Though generally pleased with the "smaller, better" Northeastern, Kariotis says he's puzzled by what he calls "this incessant drive to be in the top 100. I'm not sold on the idea, except from the ego standpoint, that being in the top 100 means a whole lot."

He adds, "I see a sense of elitism growing in the place—which I don't like to see. I don't want to see us be another Harvard or an MIT. We're a different kind of place. Northeastern turns out doers, and I want to see it stay that way.

"I think we should always have some flexibility in bringing in promising students," Kariotis says, "but I don't think we should be hard-nosed about keeping everybody out who doesn't have an SAT of 1250."

Jim Vrabel, LA'71, shares some of the same concerns about Northeastern's priorities. "I think they're not as committed to the urban student, and the poor, and the working-class student as they used to be," he says. "And I think there should be a way for them to continue that mission."

Freeland knows the emphasis on "top 100," especially as it applies to the U.S. News rankings, rankles some.

"Some wonder why a university should tie its strategic development to the moneymaking hustle of a commercial popular magazine," says Freeland. "I think that's a very legitimate concern. That's why I always make it clear, when I have the opportunity to do so, that ?Äòtop 100' is only a convenient surrogate for the underlying idea here—which is that Northeastern needs to be positioned as one of the top private universities in the country. I'm not someone who worships at the throne of the U.S. News rankings."

Time for transformation

That said, Freeland notes the rankings do provide a much-needed third-party evaluation of American colleges and universities. "The U.S. News phenomenon has revealed a huge hunger among the general population for some way of getting beyond the self-congratulatory rhetoric of academic institutions," he says. "U.S. News showed us that there is a hunger for external verification and objective data.

"If you look at the individual numbers in the rankings," adds Freeland, "you'll see they are indeed useful indicators of academic standing and the quality of an institution.

"That's why the rankings matter," he says. "The bottom line is, we need to be considered a top-tier university by any reasonable measure—of which U.S. News is one of the most noticed."

Others are equally eloquent and often passionate in their assertion that the university had to change course in the early 1990s, that becoming better academically was the only reasonable course to take.

"The university could not survive standing still," says William Fowler Jr., LA'67, H'00, who taught history and held various administrative posts at Northeastern for twenty-six years before becoming the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society. "No institution can."

They also say that, in spite of all the changes, the university is definitely not becoming elitist. The proof, they say, is Northeastern's continuing commitment to enrolling—albeit in reduced numbers—students who need help, either financially or academically. Not to mention its continuing commitment to co-op and other forms of practical experience.

"We have changed," says Stellar. "We have become more selective. But that doesn't mean we put our nose in the air. It doesn't mean we've forgotten our roots. And it certainly doesn't mean we've changed the co-op program."

Circumstances in the early 1990s—a nationwide dip in the number of eighteen-year-olds, a sluggish economy—forced Northeastern to take stock of where it was. The situation was dire: In fall 1990, freshman enrollments had dropped 28 percent. President Curry had already delayed salary raises, established a hiring freeze, and cut nonsalary budgets. In January 1991, he reluctantly laid off 175 employees.

At the same time, Curry, his lieutenants, and the trustees—knowing the numbers of high school students would drop even further over the next few years—were determined to develop a strategy that would carry Northeastern successfully into the future.

And so "smaller, better" was born. The university would downsize, its leaders decided, and focus on becoming stronger academically, thereby attracting more better-qualified students.

It had become apparent that one of the university's key missions—access—was being overemphasized. The open-door policy was actually unfair to students: Northeastern admitted nearly everyone who applied, yet graduated fewer than 40 percent of those who enrolled. The policy didn't help the school's reputation, either. And although the policy made financial sense through the late 1970s and 1980s, that ceased to be true after the demographics and the economy went south.

Neal Finnegan, BA'61, H'98, chair of the board of trustees since 1998, was the chair of that body's financial affairs committee in 1990. He remembers, "When the board of trustees looked at Northeastern's behavior during the crisis—we were going broke, and needed 4,400 freshmen to pay the bills—and found out that two-thirds of them were dropping out and we were keeping their money, we didn't like it."

Says Freeland of the old mentality, "People didn't quite realize, as they dipped lower and lower into the applicant pool, that they were admitting students who had no realistic chance of making it. And, in some sense, that was exploiting the students."

Historically, Northeastern's focus on access was not about the money, Freeland emphasizes. It was about giving kids a chance to go to college.

Prior to the 1960s, he says, "there was no UMass?ÄìBoston. No community colleges. So we filled that niche. And it was tremendously valuable and honorable. But when you add to that public institutions that can offer that kind of education at a price we can't begin to afford, and when you add to that the fact that co-op can't pay for tuition the way it used to, you realize that the model won't work going forward.

"Then the question becomes, How can Northeastern best serve young people?" Freeland says. "And we've answered by reaching out to a broader geographic region; becoming more selective; and, at the same time—relying on the strength of a revitalized and financially healthy institution—working very hard to continue to be accessible to decent numbers of the kinds of young people who have historically come here."

Finnegan, who was himself a struggling low-income Northeastern student, points out that access wasn't always a frontburner issue at the school.

"We have at times focused on access," he says. "But it's misunderstanding our history to think that we somehow have always been the accessible school. We were the accessible school when that's what the community needed us to be."

The constant thread at Northeastern, Finnegan insists, "is that it was founded on a promise to prepare people for the workplace. Co-op, or what we now call practice-oriented education, is the only constant theme in our hundred-odd years of history. The only one."

Most observers say the drive for excellence has been good for Northeastern.

"When ?Äòtop 100' was first announced, I thought it was crazy," admits Fowler, who has one of the strongest Northeastern pedigrees around: He's an alumnus, a former professor and university administrator, and most recently served as Alumni Association president. (He feels so strongly about the university that he plans to leave his Massachusetts Historical Society post to return to teaching at Northeastern in January.)

"I thought it would cost us billions of dollars," Fowler says. "But now I think we're going to do it. And why should we do it? In order for the university to be strong, we must get better. It's like life: You set goals. It's un-American not to. Were we all happy when the Red Sox were losing every year?"

A balancing act

Today, the goal is to keep Northeastern moving forward. Not just to make sure Northeastern stays intact as a business—though that's obviously important—but also to ensure the university continues to be able to offer its unique brand of education.

Freeland, who has announced he will retire next year, says his dream for Northeastern is "fulfilling our destiny as the premier university in the world for our special form of education, practice-oriented education. In my mind, we are on a mission to convince the world—both academic insiders, and prospective students and their parents—that practice-oriented education is a pedagogical approach that merits at least equal regard for intellectual rigor and developmental horsepower as traditional approaches."

In addition to promoting practice-oriented education and maintaining Northeastern's increasingly high standards, the university's movers and shakers are working to see that on-the-margin students—those with academic promise but little money, first-generation college-goers, or those who grew up in urban areas with limited academic opportunities—are still able to attend Northeastern.

Toward that end, the university has earmarked funds for twenty full scholarships, room and board included, for Boston public high-school students beginning this fall. To prevent the premier institutions—like Boston Latin School—from being overrepresented, no more than two students from each of the city's public high schools will receive the award.

"We know that, for a lot of students in the Boston public schools, financing is a big deal," says dean of admissions Ronn?© Patrick Turner. "We were admitting a lot of these students, but they weren't enrolling because of finances. We know if they are funded fully, they will have the opportunity to benefit from all Northeastern has to offer."

No GPA or SAT requirements will apply to these students, says Turner. They only have to graduate within the top 10 percent of their high school class and be recommended by their school. Throughout their college years, they will be mentored and monitored to ensure their success.

University officials are also working to raise funds for a new scholarship program aimed at helping students who have not yet reached their full promise, but whose background suggests they may be diamonds in the rough. "We know they have potential, but maybe they just started to turn their grades around their senior year," explains Turner, who says this program will also pay full tuition and room and board.

Beyond the special scholarships, says Turner, Northeastern thoroughly reviews all the applications it receives, to spot potentially successful students who may have unimpressive SAT scores. That's unusual at a large university, she says.

"Folks think the only thing we look at is the SATs," Turner says. "But that's only a small piece. We also look at high school transcripts, the quality of courses, recommendations, essays, student backgrounds. We look for students who have some leadership skills, or who may have chosen a different kind of path. We look for something we call resiliency—students who have had to deal with a difficult situation in their life, and figured out how to move beyond that."

Freeland points out that, even with Northeastern's improving profile, "we are still the university that takes the largest number of graduates from the Boston public schools, and gives the largest amount of money to those students."

No one is denying there have been, and will continue to be, fewer "nontraditional" students at Northeastern than there used to be. Neal Fogg, associate director of Northeastern's University Planning and Research office, notes the correlation that exists between student SAT scores and family socioeconomic level. As Northeastern continues to improve academically, he says, it will automatically draw students from families with a greater ability to pay for college.

Though this is certainly a change for Northeastern, Finnegan points out that many students with lower academic profiles have moved over to lower-cost institutions, such as UMass?ÄìBoston and the local community colleges. "At the present time, the access mission has been taken up by others," he says.

"It is not appropriate for us to charge young people $30,000 or $40,000 a year to find out if they can do college work," says Finnegan. "That is what we owe young people."

The money game

Many believe the university also owes young people a chance to make it through to the end of their senior year, despite higher education's staggering costs. Today, Northeastern's tuition is more than $28,000 a year, nearly three times what it was in 1990. Tack on annual room and board, and you're adding another $10,000.

Administrators know providing adequate financial aid is crucial at Northeastern, where more than 77 percent of students' families have a calculated need, according to financial services dean Seamus Harreys. (By comparison, that's true for only 55 percent of Boston University families.)

Northeastern has worked hard over the years to maintain an adequate level of financial aid. From less than $10 million in 1990, the university now provides more than $100 million in annual aid.

But coming up with increasing amounts of money to offset the effects of dwindling federal and state grants and loans, not to mention inflation, isn't easy. "Northeastern has made up the difference as best as possible," says Harreys, who can't mask the worry in his voice when he talks about the financial aid picture. "The rest is falling on families."

Even with Northeastern's help, Harreys says, some students have no choice but to drop out. The freshman-to-sophomore retention rate, he notes, is 88 percent. Of the 12 percent of freshmen who didn't re-enroll last fall—about 300 students—more than 70 percent cited financial difficulties as their reason for leaving.

Complicating the financial picture is the fact that Northeastern is heavily tuition-dependent. It can't rely as much on two other funding sources—the endowment and alumni giving—because, when compared with similar institutions, Northeastern ranks at the low end for both.

The percentage of Northeastern alumni who donate any amount of money in a given year is just 10 percent. Though some universities to which Northeastern compares itself also rank comparatively low in this regard, most do rank higher than Northeastern. (Of all American universities, Princeton enjoys the highest participation rate, 61 percent.)

"All successful private schools need substantial alumni support," says Finnegan. "Ours is terrible. It's low."

Harreys firmly believes alumni support is critical to keeping financial aid at reasonable levels. "The university can't exponentially increase the financial aid budget forever," he says.

Former Student Government Association president Bill Durkin, a junior, agrees that paying for college is of top concern to students. "Northeastern is closing in on a $40,000 price tag," he says. "The university has to make an effort to provide ample financial aid for those students who are bright and talented but might not be able to afford to come here.

"I know students who have had to leave," says Durkin. "For some, their financial situations changed at home, but their financial aid package didn't change with it. But we should never be sending a student away. I think our alumni need to look back and say, ?ÄòMaybe I can give something back.'"

Telling Northeastern's story

Some alums don't give back because they don't feel much of a kinship with current Northeastern students. Says Krapf, "People I've talked to feel disconnected from the students of today. Northeastern, to me, was a middle-class, working-class kind of college for kids who were serious and wanted to get something accomplished. Students today seem much more upscale."

But the preliminary findings of the alumni survey indicate many do feel an intergenerational connection. More than 73 percent of respondents said they agreed that funding a scholarship or financial aid was a good reason to give. And those who care deeply about the university share a heartfelt and proud belief that Northeastern students remain, in some ways, a breed unto themselves.

"The fundamental thing in common is our students know what it's like to work in the real world," says Stellar. "They're different in the way they have always been different. That's why, as a dean, I never worry about mixing students and alumni, because they get along with each other."

Durkin concurs. "We students right now are still hard-working, and dedicated to getting a good education and getting experience in the workplace. We're coming here for the same reasons former students came here. We're not the upper crust of society."

In general, though, with all the ingrained misperceptions and emotional distance, how can the university get alumni to develop a connection to the university? How can it convince them that Northeastern wants and appreciates their opinions?

Jack Moynihan, MPA'93, the new alumni relations vice president—he's put an upbeat "Go, Huskies" on his voice-mail message—has more than a few ideas up his sleeve (see page 59).

He plans to meet alumni from all over the country, to solicit their opinions about Northeastern and gather their programming ideas. He's helping to plan the new alumni center, envisioned as a spot where alumni can network, job-search, hold meetings or events, or just relax together. Moynihan wants his staff to "think outside the box" when it comes to planning alumni events and boosting volunteer ranks.

Still, the university's inner circle knows that harnessing alumni interest will be an uphill battle. The Northeastern —of old a commuter school filled with students running off to co-op positions, classes, and part-time jobs—wasn't really the kind of place that fostered a sense of community. And because Northeastern's reputation wasn't top-notch, particularly through the 1970s and 1980s, some students and alumni were hesitant to even acknowledge where they went to school.

Plus, the university wasn't establishing strong bonds with alumni. "We never really attached an enormous amount of importance to staying in touch with alumni," says Freeland, primarily because "the economics of Northeastern worked very well into the 1980s.

"Even though we weren't graduating large numbers, we had very large numbers of tuition-paying students, we kept our costs down, and we were not only covering our budgets but earning surpluses, and transferring those surpluses to the endowment," he says. "So, because the business model was working, we didn't focus on the fundraising and alumni-relations side of things because, in a way, it wasn't essential."

Today, though, it's a different story. "As we're discovering right now," says Freeland, "you can't make the kind of university we are today—selective, comprehensive, with substantial graduate and research programs, residential, and with good facilities—without a strong fundraising and alumni-relations program."

"The bottom line is, we want alumni to reconnect with Northeastern," Moynihan says. "But because of the kind of university we are, we have to be creative, and we have to be aggressive."

"We haven't taken the time to explain to people what's going on at Northeastern," Fowler says. "And we haven't paid attention to the people who made this possible—the graduates of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and beyond. We need to make them proud of the place, to tell them they built it."

He adds, "We also have to let them know the fundamentals haven't changed. This isn't the new Northeastern. It's Northeastern."

Karen Feldscher is a senior writer.