Depending on how long you’ve been a member of the Alumni Association, there’s a decent chance you’ve received an email at some point asking for your feedback on the latest edition of the magazine. We send out about 5,000 such surveys after each issue, and the responses offer valuable perspectives on the sort of stories our readers appreciate and enjoy—as well as those you don’t.

It’s been more than a decade since we’ve taken part in the more comprehensive survey offered by the folks at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the global nonprofit that represents thousands of communications, fundraising, and alumni relations professionals. Among its many other services, CASE offers an array of resources for university magazines, including an annual Editors Forum that my predecessor, Tina Hay ’83 Bus, helped start back in the late 1990s. CASE also offers a robust magazine readership survey, which provides a broad data set that goes beyond a single issue and allows us to benchmark with other alumni magazines around the country.

If you’re reading this, there’s a very good chance you’ll get an email soon asking you to participate in our latest CASE survey. It’s pretty quick and painless—about 30 questions in all—and will go a long way in helping us better understand how readers prefer to consume magazine content, the subjects that you’d like to read more (or less) about, and how we can better strengthen your connection to Penn State.

Thanks in advance for your time—and, as always, thanks for reading.

Ryan Jones '95 Com, Editor
ryanjones@psu.edu, @RJPennStater