This past weekend, 16 IOHRM alumni joined current students and faculty for the first IOHRM Alumni Professional Development Conference. The conference was a big success and was a great way for IOHRM alumni to network with one another, meet the current students, and reconnect with the IOHRM program.
There were numerous great moments over the weekend, but here are a few highlights:
- Dr. Hugh Hindman described the history of the IOHRM program and provided remarks on the current state of human resource management and industrial relations. These remarks were recorded and will be posted on the IOHRM website soon.
- Dr. Hindman was presented with a Lifetime Service Award for his decades of hard work and dedication to the IOHRM program.
- Alumni Cynthia Miller and Wayne Crowley from Lowe's made a fantastic presentation on Saturday entitled "Making It Happen" that described how change management is done in the real world.
- The "Career Journeys in IOHRM" panel, which featured five IOHRM alumni (Stacey Bumgardner, Jennifer Cline, Jess Whitaker, Derrick Swing, and Bo Hughes), gave alumni, students, and faculty a number of great tips and advice.
We also discussed future alumni events and came up with a number of great ideas including have the professional development conferences every other year and having the professional development elements of the conference qualify for PHR & SPHR credit. Be on the lookout for survey to be sent out in the next couple of weeks to ask for input on the next IOHRM alumni conference.
Finally, alumni suggested that between conferences we could organize opportunities for alumni to get together in their geographical locations (e.g., Raleigh and Charlotte) and at state and national conferences (SIOP and SHRM).
It was a great inaugural conference! It was great to meet so many of our alumni and thanks for your support of our program!