Four underclassmen have begun planning an Alumni Connections Club to connect students with Tiger graduates, who will provide guidance and support.
Junhao Guan, Kelly Kollmer, Soren Anderson and Yu-Hsiang Hung—all of whom are sophomores—are founders and co-leaders of the Alumni Connections Club. The club hopes to provide guidance and support for students as they navigate high school.
The co-leaders are currently seeking seniors who, next year and beyond, can provide advice as alumni of the school, offering guidance on the college admissions process, school clubs, and other areas that may be helpful for high-school students.
In addition, the club aims to form an alumni association, which would become an alumni-student mentorship program.
“With an emphasis on the mentorship program, we hope to provide current Tigers with a student mentor, one who can help them in the college admissions process and beyond,” Hung said.
Hung explained that the idea for this club came from the hiring of assistant principal Dorian Locklear, a Tiger alumnus who graduated in 1994.
“We started planning for this club in late January of this year, shortly after Mr. Locklear was announced to be our next assistant principal. We actually first saw that Mr. Locklear was a Tiger alum on the Proconian, and that led to our idea to create an alumni system for CHHS,” Hung said.
Locklear said the club will particularly help students determine potential career paths after graduation.
“I think that this club could be very beneficial to our Tiger family,” Locklear said. “We have Tigers in every possible field, so having that as a resource could be very beneficial to our young Tigers who are still trying to figure out what they want to do professionally.”
The Alumni Connections Club faculty advisor, Spanish teacher Braden Walsh, agreed with Locklear.
“I believe that the club will help people with something in common and create personal and professional connections that they may not otherwise form,” Walsh said. “People need human connection, and having a common bond with others is a great place to start creating those connections.”
Kollmer pointed out the club can be beneficial to future-bound college students.
“The goal of this club is to create a strong relationship between current Chapel Hill students and alumni so that we can create a community where students can benefit from the ideas and assistance provided by older alumni, such as college or course advice,” Kollmer said.
The co-leaders are currently recruiting alumni to serve as mentors to Tiger students; they hope to make the Alumni Connections Club official before Club Day next school year.
