The Black & Gold was flying high and proud at SEC Ski Day 2017 on April 29.

We had over 20 Tigers attend this year, despite a cold spring day.  Great spending time with other Tigers and mingling with the other SEC alums.  Make sure and join us next year for this fun event.

On Thursday, March 30, Rocky Mountain Tigers hosted dinner at Central Christian Church for the three Mizzou Alternative Breaks groups doing their service projects in Denver. Thirty-six current students attended and mingled with alumni and several Colorado high school students admitted to Mizzou for Fall 2017.

Tigers Tails were proudly displayed in the parking lot.

Thanks to Mizzou Alum Jason Ganahl at GQue BBQ for the discount on the catered food.

What a great program and impressive group of Mizzou students.

University of Missouri Office of Advancement officials have announced that the first Mizzou Giving Day raised a total of more than $8.2 million through 3,590 gifts. Mizzou Giving Day, which was celebrated during the 24-hour period from 12 p.m. Wednesday, March 15, to 12 p.m. Thursday, March 16, was the university’s first daylong campaign to raise support from the MU community.

Through the generous donations of Colorado alumni, the Rocky Mountain Tigers raised $1725 for our scholarship endowment.  We have now raised more than $39,000 toward our three-year goal of $50,000.

Mizzou Giving Day is a part of the Mizzou: Our Time to Lead campaign. With an overall fundraising goal of $1.3 billion, the comprehensive campaign will secure the University of Missouri’s status among the nation’s elite public universities by focusing on three priorities:

•  Endowment Building MU’s endowment will allow the university to strengthen the ability to attract and retain stellar students and faculty.

•  Signature centers and institutes These centers and institutes will be the engine of research growth that will enhance MU’s AAU status and add to the university’s distinctiveness.

•  Campus renaissance Spurred by new and renovated facilities, Mizzou will take global leadership in education and research, which will help attract and retain students and faculty.

Go to the following site to join your fellow Tigers in helping the brightest students from Colorado get one of the best educations possible with your gift today.

https://donatetomu.missouri.edu/GiveDirect/Item.aspx?item_id=131

When we think about “giving” or “donating” to Mizzou, it’s likely that our first thoughts center around money. While gifts of treasure are vital to upholding our University’s high standards as an institution (especially in a reality of shrinking state budgets), there are other ways that our alumni can give to MU to keep Mizzou strong:

Mentor a student
A great lifelong benefit of attending the University of Missouri is admittance into a very powerful network – a network of Tigers that includes more than 300,000 living alumni around the globe. Not only can alumni leverage these bonds to grow their own careers and communities, but we can also use these ties to add value to the Mizzou education of current students.

MAA offers two opportunities for alumni to mentor students: The Griffiths Leadership Society for Women, which hosts biannual conferences to bring together students and alumnae, and the True Tiger Network Mentorship Program, which creates one-on-one pairings between alumni and students with similar backgrounds or career interests.

Engage with your local MAA chapter… Or start one in your area.
Not only is it just fun to connect with other Tigers in your area, but the proceeds of our regional chapters help provide hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in local scholarships to Mizzou students through our Alumni Scholars Program.

Watch parties, student send-offs, networking mixers, 5Ks—you name it, one of our 121 regional chapters (throughout the U.S. and the world) has probably hosted it!

Become a MizzouNet Social Media Ambassador
Live far away from COMO? Short on free time? No problem. Serving as a MizzouNet Social Media Ambassador allows you to do your part to give back to Mizzou, wherever you are. A couple clicks each month has the potential to reach thousands of new eyes with important Mizzou messages.

 Twice a month, ambassadors get ready-to-share MU content sent straight to their email inbox with the option to post directly to their own social media profiles.

Read our past blog post to learn more about becoming a MizzouNet Social Media Ambassador –or just go ahead and sign up.

Host students traveling to your area through Mizzou Alternative Breaks.
During spring, summer, Thanksgiving and winter breaks, Mizzou Alternative Breaks (the second-largest program of its kind in the nation) sends more than 800 students on 65 trips to do service work domestically and internationally. To help students minimize costs during these trips, alumni living in the service destination often open up their homes to students or simply invite them over for a meal. Alumni support can make all the difference in the success of these trips and the impact of their service.

Help recruit future students.
One of the most overlooked, but important ways alumni support the future of the University is in helping bring new students to Mizzou. Each time you talk about your Mizzou experience, wear Mizzou gear or even mention that you attended to the University of Missouri, you’re serving as an ambassador for MU. And whether this impact reaches your children, younger siblings, grandchildren, nieces or nephews, you’re advertising to all the potential students in your life how wonderful it is to be a Missouri Tiger.

For more proactive ways to help great students become Tigers, check out our previous blog post for Three Ways Alumni Can Aid in Student Recruitment.

Whether through time, talent or treasure (or all three), I feel that all of us, as alumni, are called to continue giving back to MU in exchange for all the ways being Mizzou made enriches our lives. Here at MAA, that’s what our mission of Making Mizzou Stronger is all about.

When Mizzou alumni wanted to become involved in a MAA chapter in Denver in the late 1990s, they soon found there wasn’t an active chapter to welcome them. It was Rich Gould, BES ’84, and three other alumni, who have since revived the chapter to help Tigers connect in the Mile High City.

Colorado transplants Cash (’91) and Susan (’92) Claridge witnessed Gould’s efforts to grow the chapter after they moved to Denver in 1997.

“Rich was one of the founding officers of the new chapter and spent countless hours re-building and re-establishing the Rocky Mountain Tigers (RMT) chapter,” Cash said. Gould didn’t stop at restoring the chapter. For nearly two decades, he has held leadership roles and participated in chapter activities from game day watch parties to special guest events.

Gould has served in positions from RMT social chair to president and vice president—and eventually as a member of the MAA Governing Board. In 2012, he became the Capstone tracker, a position he created to maintain the chapter’s Capstone status in the MAA Columns Program by overseeing required events and obligations.

“Rich’s contribution of time, talent and treasure have been a big part of keeping the Rocky Mountain Tigers one of the top-level chapters in the country,” said David Roloff, MAA director of marketing and communication and former MAA liaison to the RMT chapter.

Gould has dedicated his time, talent and treasure to the Rocky Mountain Tigers. When the chapter re-established a scholarship fund in 2014, Gould pledged a $10,000 matching grant and spurred two more large pledges from alumni. The chapter met a $25,000 goal within a year and awarded its first scholarship from the fund in 2016.

“Had Rich not had such a passion for Mizzou, a desire to re-establish the chapter and the ability to work with a wide variety of alumni”—RMT chapter leadership said in a letter to the Mizzou Alumni Association—“the Rocky Mountain Tigers would not be what it is today.”