By Judy Henderson Prather ’73, DMin ’02, BAA Communications Coordinator

Beginning this Friday, hordes of alumni will descend on the campus for Homecoming, as students ask, “Where did all these old folks come from?”

The weekend is a time of celebration and reconnecting for everyone in the Baylor family–students, staff, and faculty, as well as alumni and their families. But for some of us, Homecoming is much more than a glorious weekend in the fall. Here at the alumni association, and across campus at the Baylor Chamber office, Homecoming is a year-round activity–something we plan toward, implement, evaluate, and then immediately begin planning again for next year.

And from where I’m sitting now, a large part of the Homecoming experience is the website: Baylor.edu/homecoming. As part of a collaboration since 2004 between Baylor ITS, Chamber, and the alumni association, I administer the university’s Homecoming website. Our goal is to keep the site current year-round, with loads of stories, pictures, and helpful information. Chamber does apparel orders and the student involvement section, and I oversee the rest of it.

If you’ve never checked the site out, please spend a little time there. Read about the rich history and traditions that make Homecoming so special. Check out the most up-to-date calendar of events or view a map of our changing campus. (And, though it’s too late this time, you can order your tickets online next year.)

And did I mention that there are LOTS of great photographs? Thanks to Baylor Photography and our own communications staff, every major event of the weekend will be captured in pictures–truly worth a thousand words. So, if you make it to Waco, you can relive the weekend and see if you show up in the photos. And if you don’t, you can experience Homecoming vicariously on the website. (To whet your appetite for this weekend, you may want to check out last year’s galleries, too.)

Next week, in the afterglow of Homecoming 2008, I’ll be busily updating stories and wading through hundreds of photos–sorting and sizing and preparing photo galleries. Then, by the end of next week–good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise–we’ll have everything ready for you to see. We hope you enjoy it.

By the way, Homecoming 2009 is next October 23-25. It’s not too early to make your reservations!

By Todd Copeland, Editor, The Baylor Line and Director of Communications

Last week, the communications staff of the Baylor Alumni Association — that would be me, Lisa Asher, Judy Prather, and Meg Cullar — held a two-day/one-night retreat. Our location was a nice bed-and-breakfast in Glen Rose, right on the Paluxy River. Our purpose was to apply some presidential-level strategery to our planning for next year’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

If you haven’t seen news of the BAA’s upcoming “big anniversary,” then here’s the short version: In 2009, the alumni association will celebrate its 150th birthday. Back in 1859, when Baylor was located in Independence, Baylor President Rufus Burleson oversaw the alumni association’s creation, and by June there were forty-two former students — twenty-three men and nineteen women — who qualified for membership. In 2009, the BAA will turn 150 years old with more than 19,000 members.

During the past year and a half, we’ve covered the launch of the Sesquicentennial Campaign — the BAA’s effort at significantly raising its endowment — in the pages of the Baylor Line magazine. And you may have received e-mails and brochures about the fundraising drive. It’s a program that is vitally important for the BAA to successfully accomplish, and so we have been putting our communications and marketing time and brainpower into helping our development team pursue it.

But now here we are just a few months away from the start of the year in which we’ll observe the BAA’s Sesquicentennial, and we realized that we had not constructed a full-scale, fleshed-out plan for marking and celebrating the reaching of that milestone. Time to get moving . . .

The staff retreat was very productive — lots of “strategery,” lots of good ideas, a few lame ideas, and lots of crocheting while we talked through things. (Ask the “Line Ladies” for more on the crocheting part.) Our retreat followed a recent meeting of the BAA’s Board of Directors, during which the programs and communications committees met jointly to plan for the Sesquicentennial celebration, so we already had a foundation of possible actions and possible communications ideas for us to build upon.

In the end, we came away with a solid plan for how best to tell the story — both in the Baylor Line and online — of the Baylor Alumni Association’s remarkable record of service to Baylor for the past 150 years. Starting in January, you’ll see feature stories in the magazine that examine different aspects of the BAA’s programs, and you’ll find brief “fun facts” about the BAA’s history appearing in our online publication, Between the Lines.

I’m sure there will be other things that we’ll come up with to support the development and programs staff in their efforts to continue raising endowment funds and celebrating our anniversary at events in our Sesquicentennial year. There’s always a need for new, or more nuanced, ideas. Hmm . . . might be time for another retreat in a few months.