Forever Keele eZine Summer 2020 | Page 27

Forever Keele 27 Join in & get involved! Keele goes Virtual With big gatherings and events postponed or restricted for the foreseeable future, Keele has continued to find innovative ways of engaging with recent graduates and prospective students. Keele hosted its first ever virtual Class of 2020 celebrations in July to encourage students, staff and alumni to celebrate their accomplishments, which reached over 250,000 people. With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic preventing summer graduation ceremonies from taking place this year, the virtual Class of 2020 aimed to bring everyone together to celebrate, and was a great success. The online event hosted across our Keele social media channels featured Facebook live streams, sharing memories and congratulatory messages using the #KeeleClassOf2020 hashtag, and school-specific celebrations. These online celebrations were by no means a replacement for formal graduation ceremonies which are planned to take place in 2021, but rather a way to show how proud we are of our students' achievements in the meantime. You can watch it here. Keele also launched its first ever virtual open day on the 20th June, giving prospective students the opportunity to tour the University from home. The online event aimed at 2021 undergraduate starters, included an immersive interactive 360° tour of our 600 acre campus, a chance to ask questions of current students and academic staff, and an opportunity to take a look at on-campus accommodation and chat with the accommodation team. Over 5,000 people visited the virtual open day web pages, double the amount that pre-registered in advance of the event, with over 3,000 viewing the academic talks pages. Prospective students from over 65 countries worldwide also tuned in to see what Keele has to offer. The walking tour of campus with a Keele ambassador answering student questions live on Instagram reached almost 4,000 people in total, with a 366% increase in Instagram page views compared to our daily average. LinkedIn Learning available to the graduating classes of 2019 & 2020 Keele wants to continue to support graduates from the leaving classes of 2019 and 2020 by inviting them to enhance their career and personal development through LinkedIn Learning FREE until July 2021. LinkedIn Learning is an online educational platform that helps you discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills through expert-led course videos. With more than 5,000 courses and personalised recommendations, you can discover, complete and track courses related to your field and interests. To take advantage of this offer, please complete this short form here and unlock access to on-demand courses to help you learn more and achieve success. We would also like to remind our alumni that as a graduate you can make appointments with our Careers Consultants, gain access to hundreds of resources and attend free workshops and event sessions for up to three years after you graduate. Did you graduate in the last recession of 2008/2009? If so, we need your advice! Our colleagues in the Careers and Employability Team are really keen to have some encouraging stories, advice and guidance about job hunting in a recession. They would like to share video clips and sound bites with recent graduates and those who are coming up to their final year of study, to help them navigate the potentially choppy waters of employment and job prospects ahead of them, as we continue to manage the impact and aftermath of Covid-19 on the global economy. Did you find you were adversely affected? If so, what did you do? Did it make you change your career path? Did you have to make difficult choices, which have since worked out? How did you promote yourself and your skills in a volatile workplace? If you have any first-hand experiences or are happy to impart advice that can be shared with our most recent Keelites, please email us at AlumniHQ. Keele Drama Society offers membership to Drama Alumni members. May 2021 will mark 70 years since Keele Drama Society’s first Shakespeare production. The Society has set up a new type of membership, exclusive to Drama Alumni. Alumni can join the society for free as an associate member, to receive exclusive alumni newsletters, exciting deals and surprises throughout the year. To find out more, visit https://keelesu.com/ activities/society/drama/