Barnard College

OFFICEOFASSOCIATEALUMNAE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK 10027
May 6, 1971
To: Catherine Stimpson
From: Nora Percival
Re: , Task Force Report

Thank you for the copy of this report, which I find very
good indeed. I think it details a most intelligent approach
to our goal of putting Barnard in the forefront of the effort
to make positive responses to the emerging needs of women.

My own ideas for some time have been running in a vein
especially related to your assumptions 4 and 6. What I would
like to see done to use our alumnae resources to better
advantage is the creation of an Alumnae Advisory Corps. This
would not be at all a vocational project, but a flexible multi-
faceted tool to create student contacts with alumnae who have

’achieved interesting careers in various fields, often in an
unorthodox fashion.

An example of the sort of contact I visualize is a college
friend of mine who in her forties went back to graduate school
for a Ph.D. and is now a successful lay psychiatrist and teacher.
She was visiting in.my office one afternoon when a younger alumna
came in to ask how she might get some counseling about the relative
wisdom of graduate work in psychology or a school of social work,
in order to enter the counseling field. A spontaneous session
of about twenty minutes with my friend produced "exactly the sort
of help I was looking for and didn't know how to find - a chance
to talk with someone who has been there herself - the most useful
talk I've had out of dozens". My friend was also delighted by
the chance to be helpful on a person - to - person basis, and
volunteered some of her precious free time on a regular basis
if some way could be found to make it available to students for
personal counseling.

We have literally hundreds of such alumnae in this area - -
successful women with the initiative to have forged or often
even created their careers, and a feeling of wanting to give
back some of the help they got at Barnard. If an imaginative
plan could be devised to set up a register of volunteers, to
be used on a consulting basis, as well as include these people
in occasional conference or workshop sessions for more general
exposure, we could offer a valuable service to students, alums