To mark its 50th anniversary, CASE has published CASE at 50: A Narrative History of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a book highlighting special moments and seminal stories from the first half-century of CASE. The following excerpt comes from Part I of the book, 1974-1994: Founding and Formulation (Chapter 2).

When CASE was founded, membership comprised 2,052 institutions with 6,915 individual representatives, the great majority of whom had become members as a result of the dissolution of the American Alumni Council and American College Public Relations Association and the transition of their membership from the precursor organizations to the fledgling CASE. Pulling together the disparate programming threads of the parent organizations, CASE began asking past members of AAC and ACPRA to commit to a broader mission going forward. Each member was sent a light blue card with “We Will” written on it, on which they were asked to agree to 16 commitments, each driven by a “We Will” pledge: