|
"I offered him career advice and information that would help him reach his goal," Lakas said.
Lakas gave the student resources to learn about the Foreign Service and told him about the procedures of the program. After the two had been working together for some time, the student came up to Lakas with a different kind of question.
"He asked me 'why are you doing this?'" Lakas said. "I explained that it was simple: because he asked me to."
Lakas is the president of GW's Alumni Association, which represents more than 150,000 alumni worldwide and is the umbrella organization for the individual school associations. Providing services that range from networking socials and directories of alumni contact information to alumni access to University facilities, such as basketball games at the Smith Center, the GWAA aims to assure that although students may leave the campus, they are still connected to the GW community.
Since taking office last year, Lakas, a 1946 graduate of the School of Government (now the School of Business and Public Management), said he has been dedicated to strengthening the alumni-student network to reach the level of many Ivy League and other prestigious universities.
"We are still growing," Lakas said. "For a very long time we were a concrete campus and only since the '70s have the ties of community been strengthened. When students walk around campus they feel that they are part of something."
Lakas led the way for a new program that offers grants of up to $5,000 to the various schools that propose ways to reconnect alumni to the University. For example, the Mount Vernon Campus proposed a women's leadership seminar that invites alumni back to campus. Grants have also been awarded to the Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the Elliott School.
Senior Maria Comella, the president of the Student-Alumni Society, says that Lakas' passion for the University and its students has really helped lead the GWAA in its new direction.
