Extracted from an Email to an Alumnus from Sangeeta Dave:
I really would like to tell you the story of how the idea for the conference got sparked. I was sitting in Melson (the current home of the psychology department) and a woman walked in. I was struck that she wore the same shorts that i wear, drawstrings and all! I saw her perusing the list of professors, and I thought she might be lost. We started talking and I found out she's an alumnette. She told me so many stories of academic life back in the day. These are crazy stories of classes with Mike Arons, oral final exams, and so on. I thought at one point how nice it would be if there were more classmates who could be hearing these stories with me. They are amazing! I also thought, how nice it would be if there were more alumni present to tell their stories. One thought led to another and I got this idea.
I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. It was like I was carrying around this great big secret. But before I could really talk about it, I had to get preliminary permissions. I had to go to the Alumni House and talk to folks there, and get support from faculty. Once that was set, I sent out the announcement in various ways.
Since then, we've found that there are 3400 alumni, grad and undergrad, about 2/3 of residing in the Southeast. Only 100 people are lost or deceased. we have to work to get the contact info for the lost folks, but the list is comparatively short. The only unfortunate part is that this list is not exhaustive - these are only people that have kept themselves registered with Alumni Services. There is a link on the "Links" page to everyone registered, so if you know of a way to contact someone that is not mentioned on that page, please feel free to do so.
So please check back for more info and give any suggestions you might have. We'll need help on the historical timeline, but, with the help ofothers, we're piecing together (like a detective) pieces of our history. So if you have any pieces of the puzzle, feel free to send it to us so we can add them.
Also, there is currently a listserve for grad students and alumni: psygradcom@yahoogroups.com.
This is independent of the conference, but if you have any interest in taking part in the community, you're welcome to.