Constituent Coding for Students who received a certificate but not a degree from Continuing Studies

Karen Henry

We are going to add constituents to the database of students who received a certificate from Continuing Studies program and not a degree from the university. I was wondering how other universities code these people. I do not want them coded as an alumni. Many thanks, karen

John Cioni

@Karen Henry interested in this as well. This is something we've discussed for quite some time, but have yet to add them to RE. I'd say give them their own constituent code and use attributes to track their program details.

Dariel Dixon

We are going to add constituents to the database of students who received a certificate from Continuing Studies program and not a degree from the university. I was wondering how other universities code these people. I do not want them coded as an alumni. Many thanks, karen

I'm curious about this? What is your rationale for not coding them as alumni? I just want to know what the thinking is? I've had this conversation many times about what constitutes alumni. And to be honest, it doesn't really matter as long as there is some consistency and documentation about the definition. Whether they attended for a year or for 5 is somewhat irrelevant.

That said, I've also used the Alumni - No Degree constituent code. You can just create a code for those who have certificates, but then the question is why? Is there any reporting you would need to do to exclude or include these folks by themselves? I would have a plan for the code before creating it.