Giving to higher education reached nearly $47 billion in 2018, a 7 percent increase from 2017 and the highest amount ever reported.

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Although more than two decades have passed since Claire Matern attended Zurich International School, she can still remember the warm embrace she felt as a newly transplanted second-grader from Brooklyn, New York.

"I got sung the song and I sang the song [to others]," Matern says of the welcome anthem serenaded to all newbies during school assemblies. "It was a nice indication that you're one of us. And when you left, everyone sang ‘Happy Trails,' which was so touching."

That Matern still recalls those details despite attending ZIS for just three years is an outcome any international school would welcome, too.

International schools typically follow a national or international curriculum different from the host country. They educate a highly transient, multinational, and multilingual student population for global citizenship. Since 2000, the K-12 international school market has tripled, as more wealthy local families seek the Westernized education and career opportunities that come from it for their children.

As an undergrad at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, Austin McChord was never a stickler about homework. Thank goodness.

Many cultures are deeply generous about the immediate needs of food, clothing, and shelter and less so for long-term, more abstract missions.

The Alumni Engagement Metrics Task Force was created by the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations in the fall of 2016 to address the need for an industry wide framework to measure alumni engagement.

When scrolling through Instagram, alumni might expect to see typical images on their alma mater's feed: scenic vistas of the quad, graduation caps, lattes from the campus coffee shop.

How does an international school that sends 99 percent of its graduates off to universities abroad get alumni to come back?

To Nikki Sunstrum, director of social media at the University of Michigan, social media channels shouldn't be viewed as "shiny" but rather as strategic communications platforms. Since Sunstrum joined U-M in January 2014, the university has become a leader in using Snapchat to engage with prospective and current students as well as young alumni. "If you're not going to put the most valuable content in that space, it's a missed opportunity," she says. Sunstrum will chair the 2017 CASE Social Media and Community Conference, which will be held March 13–15 in Los Angeles.

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