From the Nominator

"Over the span of three days in July of 2022 in Las Vegas, the MIT Alumni Association hosted the largest young alumni gathering in history, the "Mega-Pi Reunion." Pi Reunion, 3.14 years from graduation (almost to the day), is a milestone celebration for recent MIT grads, with a more than 20-year tradition at MIT. To celebrate, MIT alums head to Vegas to reconnect and experience dozens of unique events and activities with their classmates—ranging from racing dune buggies in the desert to selling out a concert venue for their Pi Toast. This larger-than-life—and quintessentially MIT—event is a critically important avenue for laying the foundation for lifelong engagement with a notoriously difficult-to-reach young alumni audience.  

2023 was dubbed “Mega-Pi Reunion,” as it brought together the classes of 2017, 2018, and 2019 to account for pandemic year makeup reunions. In all, 27 events drew 2,006 attendees, with a staggering average of more than 47 percent attendance from each celebrating class and another nearly 200 wraparound year attendees.  

The MIT Alumni Relations team partnered closely with the class councils to recruit a 30-person planning committee, which met weekly for over a year to design a thoughtful scope of events and create clever alumni-voiced marketing with quirky signature lines and custom memes. These efforts amounted to selling out a 650-room block at the Aria Resort & Casino, attracting over 1,500 attendees to signature Friday and Saturday night events, and bringing in more than $40,000 in corporate sponsorships to help defray attendee costs."

From the Judges

The judges felt this entry is a great model for enhancing young alumni engagement. Combining class years to strengthen the connectedness of the community and hosting off-campus (as this cohort was just on campus a few short years ago) contributed to the strong engagement and attendance achieved. Despite being a COVID-19-forced decision to combine class years, this serves as a great model for those considering holding large, multi-class, off-campus reunions.