In hopes to connect past students from when FHC opened to now, seniors Kalie Rubey, Kelli Bailey, and Ali Czarnecki collaborated as an Advanced Marketing team to get the job done.

“The reason for this becoming a project is to connect our school’s alumni for the FHPS foundation,” Kelli said.”It will give FHPS the opportunity to keep our alumni database updated for school-related events including class reunions and [class outings].”

The girls were assigned the difficult task just last week. After a visit from the FHPS Foundation, Personal Finance and Marketing teacher, Kristin O’Brien assigned the job as a group project rather than a class project. The girls were offered a choice between this or a DECA project, and they decided on the latter.

“We chose to do the alumni [project] because we thought it would be a good opportunity for our school to get more money and to reconnect with the past FHC students,” Kelli said.

It turns out the girls walked into more than just a school project. The alumni project ended up being an assignment among the three FHPS schools, and they will be battling it out to see who can contact the most students to put in the alumni directory. If they succeed, the school of the winning team will be awarded $2000 to spend how it chooses.

While the girls all have different ideas on what they would spend the money on, they are still faced with a challenge: getting in contact with every graduate since the founding of the school.

“It’s hard because people probably won’t donate money and sign up for emails that they don’t know about,” Kelli said. “We’re going to have to figure out a good way to communicate with them that [the alumni directory emails] are real, and not junk.”

Although the girls will have to overcome the challenges of legitimacy and reaching out to so many people, they already have a game plan on how to achieve these tasks.

“[We know] some people, like Kelli’s parents and all her aunts and uncles, that went here,” Ali said.” So, maybe we can send out notices to their friends, and get in contact with other people like that. We have connections that we can use to overcome those [challenges].”

To start, the girls were given a book of every graduate, but when it came to how they would contact past alumnae, they were on their own. They plan to use people from their personal lives as a basis and to try and contact as many people as possible through their inner circle of communication and branch out from there. They all agree the key to overcoming the difficult task is communication with others.

Overseeing the team is O’Brien. She was approached by principal Steve Passinault to assign this task to her students in place of researching a local company. Despite the change in plans from the original assignment, O’Brien believes it is an important project for her students to take on and learn from.

“Marketing research is key to the success of businesses and organizations,” O’Brien said. “It is vital to know who your customers/clients are in order to better serve them. The {FHPS] Foundation wants to have an active and accurate database so they can reach out to alumni for financial support, feedback, and to provide relevant information regarding the district.”

The challenge to contact as many people as possible presents a difficult task in itself, especially considering the lack of time the students have to gather information for the alumni directory.

“The Alumni Chase runs from February 1st to April 30th,” O’Brien said. “After the deadline, the groups will need to write a one-page summary describing their process, success, and any other pertinent information.”

Although early on their journey in connecting every FHC graduate, they hope the project will teach them how to stay connected to their grades and to the grades below them after they graduate. They also hope this project will provide a guide for how to keep their Ranger Pride even after they have gone to college.

“Our main purpose is to get the alumnae aware,” Ali said. “Our first step is to get them aware because right now, most of them don’t even know about it.”

Currently, the girls are using a web of personal connections to get in touch with the graduates, whether it be via emails, Facebook, calling, or leaving a message on phones.

However, if you or anyone you know is an FHC alumnus, please contact Kelli Bailey at [email protected] to register for the alumni directory.