Great minds online
Ambitious campuswide project offers web portal, services for alums

By José Rodríguez, Development Communications

01 May 2002 | It started with the idea that all Cal alumni should be able to affirm their lifelong connection to the university with a berkeley.edu e-mail identity. That idea spawned “@cal” — a full-scale online alumni portal that launched with a suite of free services this month.

Since it went live, hundreds of alumni have registered each day for an e-mail forwarding address, a searchable alumni directory, e-mail list discussion groups and a career network.

The @cal portal — with its tag line “great minds online” — is an ambitious campus undertaking, involving each of Berkeley’s 14 schools and colleges, the California Alumni Association, and the campus Career Center as partners.

Like the campus and the alumni body it represents, @cal offers its users diverse entry points.

Alumni can enter the community through the main gate, at cal.berkeley.edu, as well as through any of the @cal pages designed specifically for the schools and colleges. The latter mirror the campuswide site in look and feel but contain specialized content geared to alumni of the particular school or college.

From a campus perspective, the @cal portal offers a “monumental opportunity” to streamline the university’s diverse and fragmented alumni databases, according to Vice Chancellor for University Relations Donald McQuade. The launch of the community portal provides all of the campus’s schools and colleges and the California Alumni Association a single database for alumni relations uses.

The @cal project also helps integrate campus web services and promote collaboration across many campus units.

The portal is the result of a year-long effort, led by the Development Operations and Development Com-munications units of University Relations, working with the California Alumni Association and the schools and colleges.

The @cal community is open to anyone who has attended Berkeley or is a member of the California Alumni Association. The services are free. Eligible students may participate in the career network.