"Everything Engagement"

For Auburn’s Kurt Sasser, connection is mission critical.

As the Chief Engagement Officer for Auburn University's Advancement team and the Director of the Auburn Alumni Association, he works daily to develop meaningful and impactful ways to engage the Auburn Family – and connect them back to the university.

“The Auburn Family means all our 252,000+ living Auburn alumni, but it's much more than that,” explained Sasser. “We have parents who went to another school who are sending their son or daughter to Auburn, we have corporations, foundations, friends, family, and other stakeholders who are all in the Auburn Family.”

The pride that comes with belonging to the Auburn Family is something Sasser knows firsthand. He’s a two-time graduate of Auburn’s Harbert College of Business, earning his bachelor’s degree in 2011 and master’s degree in 2016. As an undergraduate, Sasser served as Auburn’s Student Body President 2010 to 2011.

“I think that defines Auburn in some sense,” said Sasser. “And what I mean by that is you can take a Sheffield, Alabama guy that graduated with 16 people in his high school senior class, put him in an environment of 25,000 and he's able to get involved and engaged.”

Enhancing Engagement Opportunities

In an age of constant contact—and constant distraction— Sasser is spearheading a transformative expansion of Auburn’s alumni relations structure, positioning the university to better connect with its growing, nationwide community of multi-generational family, friends and stakeholders.

“It's our job and our responsibility to go and meet them where they are, regardless of their stage of life, regardless of their geographical location,” said Sasser. “We think of our alumni and our friends in segments, and we call them life stages. It all begins with students, and then it goes to younger alumni, then midlife and then seasoned.”

Under Sasser’s leadership, Auburn’s Advancement Engagement team is working to expand the framework of programming and networking opportunities, offering a more accessible way for the Auburn Family to connect through local chapters nationwide. 

In October, Sasser’s team appointed five regional engagement officers to better leverage their club and affiliate network as a part of the Auburn Alumni Association. 

“These officers go out, connect and utilize our volunteer network to meet Auburn Family members who are otherwise not connected back to the institution and find out what they’re passionate about,” he explained.

The Auburn Club and Affiliate Program supports more than 100 active groups. These clubs and affiliates are spread across 32 states and a handful are based on common interests such as military veterans or specific areas of study.

Fostering Lifelong Partnerships

Sasser and company are able to tap in to a multipronged outreach approach that embraces high-tech while maintaining high-touch efforts.

“Auburn Athletics, famously quoted by David Housel, is the front porch to the institution,” said Sasser. “Engagement means inviting you from the front porch inside the house.”

Fostering lifelong partnerships ensures the Auburn Family continues to serve as powerful ambassadors for the university’s brand, ensuring Auburn’s legacy and mission endures for generations to come.

“We want our alumni and friends to not just be connected to Auburn at a certain point in time, we want them to be connected and engaged on an ongoing basis,” he said.

Visit the Auburn Alumni Association website to learn more!

Check out our "Everything Auburn" Podcast website here!

Transcript

0:04

Welcome to the Everything Auburn podcast. My name is Carter. I'm so glad that you're here on this special holiday abbreviated edition of Everything Auburn. My name is Carter. I'm one time alum. Next to me is Dalton Odom my cohost two time alum. And I'd also like to say welcome to our special guest, Kurt Sasser Also, annoyingly, two time Alum, so. So here I have two. Twos and one one. That's right. Yeah, and I even scraped, I even scraped by when I did it. So. But it's okay. I can relate to that. Well, welcome to Everything Auburn, how are you doing Kurt? Doing well. Doing well. Happy holidays. And, thank you for having me. Question one is actually going to come for me, which is probably not typical. Let's do it. The idea is you would ask me questions. Is that right? Generally. That's okay. That's okay. So you, we've been hanging out right for the past 5 or 7 minutes. Can you just kind of. Look behind the curtain? Warm up a little warm up, and, I did not know something that you just alluded to in your opening remarks. This is an abbreviated. Yeah. So so what I've heard now is I got asked 48 hours ago to come on this. This is I'm by far low on the totem pole at best. Second choice. And not only that, it's abbreviated. Wow. Well, if you want to go along. Feel free to react. If you want to go along, we can do it. I admittedly, we've done a couple half hours here, so, you know, maybe work, but like, let's just strap in. We'll do for an hour and a half. Let's go. Let's, let's clear the schedule and let's do it. And your listener account has dramatically decreased because of that. We will not do that. No. It's okay here. For this podcast. Too much. Thank you. I appreciate. Yeah. Well, we did have a slight schedule adjustment. And Kurt Kurt was called in from the. So that's the most diplomatic way I've ever heard someone say yes. Thank you were last on the list. No, you. Weren't. Not last. I was picked last at recess for flag football. You were not last, but you definitely weren't picked first Right? Right. Right. But happy to be here. Kurt, if you could share the all of our dozens and dozens and hundreds of listeners that include both my parents. What is it you do here at Auburn for? For all the people at home. So just to kind of clear up where you kind of fit in. Yeah. So thankful to work for Auburn advancement, which, if it's not kind of clear for our audience, is really made up of three different entities. Philanthropy, which is what we've historically called development. Now, engagement, which is the team that I get to come in every day and help support and serve. Traditionally, we call it have called that Alumni Affairs. And our Auburn Alumni Association is underneath that. So every day I kind of come to work and think through strategically and hopefully intentionally, how do we effectively engage the Auburn family and the Auburn family? Intuitively, probably is all of our 252,000 live in Auburn alumni. Heck yeah. But it's much more and more than that. We've got parents who went to another school who are sending their son or daughter to Auburn. We've got corporations, we've got foundations, we've got, friends and family members who are all in on the Auburn family are just as included as our alumni. Yeah. There were also thinking through how do we effectively engage. And so then the third, kind of like to that store of Auburn advancement, which would be what you guys get to do every day, right? Yeah. And marketing. So we think of it, as a funnel. We've got the one to all. Would you guys think about how do we get our message out and brand out to the whole audience? And then I really focus kind of on that Auburn family piece. And then obviously our philanthropy is the 1 to 1 of how we're generating philanthropic support to make impact to Auburn University. Well, what a perfect time. Holiday season. You spend time with family and your job is the Auburn family. I love it. Yeah. It's been, it's been I've been in the role for about a year and a half. And it's been so special. And I sincerely mean that. I came from the development or philanthropy kind of world and, coming into thinking more of a macro big picture of how do we really be more intentional with engaging the Auburn family with not only the expectation that we need them to come to Auburn, but it's also our job and our responsibility to go and meet them where they are, where, you know, regardless of their stage of life, regardless of their geographical location, it's our job to connect them back to the institution. And that's kind of what we're thinking about. That's been a lot of fun. You know, it's a special time of year and kind of thinking about our whole family and how blessed we are. So thanks for having me. No, no. Well, hey, you know what? We're glad you decided to join us here on our rinky dink little production over here. Abbreviated, abbreviated rinky dink, little production. Abbreviated. Yeah, but it's also I think it's really cool that anybody can everybody is welcome the Auburn family. But it's one thing that you're very accustomed knowledgeable on having been a student. Yeah. in SGA two time alum. Two time. The two time. Yeah. There you go. Work it in. Dalton How many do you have? Two. Okay. What about you C-Dog. Yeah. Just the one. Okay. Just the one. Yeah. That's fine. But you know it very well. You've lived it. You you are, you know, and it's it's I don't know if that's as common everywhere else to have someone in a position like yours that is as well versed in who Auburn is. Which I would imagine is a strength and something that you use to your advantage on a daily basis because you know this place like the back of your hand. We we're fortunate enough our talent and culture office is it's Carter and I experienced yesterday had Aubie Claus we did. Heck, yeah. And, and we were actually talking about today at Aubie Claus as we were waiting in line and this is actually really cool, we think of our alumni and our friends and kind of segments and we call them life stages. And I'll just go through them very quickly. The first one, students, it all begins with students would make sense. Would you kind of just alluded to with my my past experience. And then it goes to younger alumni, which would make sense. Then midlife and then seasoned and it all begins with the students. And as you and I were conversing yesterday during all because around the holiday season, it's actually really cool being here in the Wiggle studio in the Milton Student Center, because I was sharing with you, I used to host a live a live radio show, which got really interesting. We actually have a clip right now if we end up with. Yeah, yeah. Please, please, please have had to delete, delete that. My senior year, 2010 national championship year, Cam Newton. Just like magical. And, it was called fireside chat. Burnin it up. And it was myself, and the editor of the Glamor Rada and the WEGL Station manager, and his name was Chee. And, we had just an awesome, awesome time hanging out. Super fun. I'm not. I have no idea what we talked about. Yeah. You're probably our most experienced person on mic then that we've had. Okay. All right. That's. I'm not sure if that's a great good thing. But you're a well seasoned radio host. Yes. I've done all five episodes as a senior in college on the radio, talking about stuff I had no idea about. So if that qualifies as your most seasoned guest, I'm not sure what that says. Yeah. I mean, I have experience on the mic. He does? That's fair. Well, how do you have an experience on the mic? Yes, that's a setup question. I do know the answer. I, I had. Thank you. Kurt, I had the privilege of serving as the open mic man. Wait. One year? Yeah, sure, I know, I know. Oh, my gosh. So speaking in front of, you know, 90,000. Never done that before. You know, hey, let's. Talk let's talk about it. Let's talk about that okay. Great. Let's dive into it. Okay. How many mic men have there been. Oh gosh, I don't know. Don't you love asking a question you don't know? I don't. Other person knows the answer. I believe the origins go back to the late 60s. Early said, okay, so whatever. Let's just say what is that? 60. Sure. Okay. Round number six, I like it. Okay. How many? How many of those? Mic Man. Do you think because you alter your voice when you when you're. Yes, for sure. But I don't feel like that's always been a thing. No, I don't think it has. I don't think so. I it's weird because if you've heard. Me, there's there's almost I persona. 100%. I become a different voice like guttural. Right. I know where I'm from. We're trained. Mic Men are trained to change their voice, and things have to sound different. And what is. This training like? Well, they like you in the WEGL station. They lock you in? Yes. For me, the guy who's the Mic Man before me basically sat me down and was like, look, hey, your voice. We gotta work on that. And I was like, okay, cool. Like what a. Congratulations on being Mic Man, currently you don't have the right voice. Currently you got a lot of work to do. It's not working right now. And so just repetition I it's a miracle that I can talk. I don't know how I don't have vocal nodules. You did for three years. Three I as far as I know. Was that ever a concern for sure. Okay. Well because at half time I'm pounding cough drops, drinking hot tea. Put some money in there, put some honey in there for sure. But it was always basketball. I was fine or excuse me, football. I was fine because I had a microphone. Basketball is where I lost my voice. Oh, because you had to really. I really had to do it. But that makes sense. Yeah, I would, I'd wake up on Sunday mornings and have no voice. It was a good time. But as far as I know, though. Has anyone ever done it for three? As far as I know, I think I'm the only person ever to do it for three. That's awesome. Yeah. We need to get you. Yeah, yeah. I know, I know, there have been guys who I cheered for a year or cheered. Yeah, right. regular cheer for two, then they were Mic Man like the last year. But as far as I know, I'm the only one who ever did Mic Man for three. Yeah, well, let's give him a crown. That's actually kind of cool. Seriously, but you were SGA president though? Oh, which is also cool. I didn't know we did it. We're going to go there. Actually SGA president, during the national championship year. I was pretty sure it was actually really cool. And not to, just for context, sure I come I'm from Sheffield, Alabama. Okay. I was up there for Thanksgiving. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. And it's a wonderful and special place. They just take care of each other and advancement. We talk about, trust the person to your left. Trust the person to your right. Always trust good intent. They do that. They live it like their community is really special. But it's small. And, I graduated with 16 people. Eight girls, eight boys. 12 of us had been together since kindergarten. Wowzers. And I came to Auburn and I was like, whoa. A little bit of a shock there. So it was this, like, amazing special journey. And I think that's that defines Auburn in some sense. And what I mean by that is you can take a Sheffield, Alabama guy that graduated with 16 people in his class, put him in an environment of 25,000, and he's able to get involved and engaged, not by my own doing, but really Auburn's doing in terms of, we don't care where you come from, we don't care who you are. Once you are a part of the Auburn family, regardless of if you're alumni, a parent or a friend, you're all right. You have ownership. We had a former leader, and I loved how he said this. Auburn has a soul, and Auburn has a soul. Yeah, right. This is this is not just another higher education institution. We've got a soul. I mean, there's something to the loyalty of our fan base. It's always overly positive, regardless of a record or packing out Jordan-Hare Stadium. We're packing out Auburn Arena, we're packing out Plainsman Park. We're supporting volleyball. We're supporting, golf on both the women's and men's side. Auburn has a soul to it. And so coming from that environment, to to where I'm at today, where my, my wife, and our kids call this place home. It's just super special. Yeah, yeah, it's always thankful to be a part of it. It's always been one of those things that people I've heard it said about a lot of places, a lot of things you don't know. And it's hard to explain hard put words into it, you know, when you feel it. And that's kind of like a copout answer. Yeah, I feel like sometimes. But I've been a lot of places that people describe like that. I've never been somewhere like Auburn. And I think is that soul. It's that feeling that you have. There's that ubiquity of somebody you see with an Auburn shirt on or Auburn hat or someone you see on campus, and you have this shared experience. And you and I even, I don't know fully the, the impetus with your reason, but you and I even left. We did we did a boomerang and we I left for three years, moved my family. We had our daughter at the time, had her son up in Nashville, Tennessee. And I left. I work for Delta Airlines for three years, and I was actually sharing this with our senior vice president and executive director of the Auburn Alumni Association, president of the Foundation even more titles. You want me to give Rob Wellbaum, he's actually got more. Rob I was sharing this with Rob. We had, our corporate and foundation relations team did a Delta Day at Delta when I worked at Delta. And he said, do you remember that? I was like, yeah, I was there, but I was working for Delta. And I remember being there in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta is a great company, great environment, but I very vividly remember missing Auburn and it's it's David Housel has that kind of famous quote to your point. Once you've experienced it, you will never be the same, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, I had a very you know, I left, a lot of the reason I left is because I had gone to school Auburn. I was working here full time. I had been, had been in Auburn for like eight, nine years. And it was like those like college and right out of college years. And that was my whole life experience. And there's this little part of me that thought, I need to kind of leave the nest. Same. And, and see if I can fly on my own, same. And I did, and it was a really fun. And then I kind of did that for a few years. My daughter was born, started kind of, you know, wanted to try to make it a life change, how to be a better dad, work less, you know, like crazy hours. I was working and then I had a friend call me, say, hey, we have this job. You kind of do this sort of thing. Do you know anybody who is good for it? And in that moment, I was like, I really miss Auburn. I know, I. Really I really miss Auburn. I might know someone who's really good for it. It's me. I might, I might, I might be interested myself. And then there was, you know, almost two and a half years, three years later, I was right back. It's so interesting you are saying this because I have I would found that young alumni category. I hope I still fall in the young alumni. And so how old are you? I'm 25. 29. Oh. You're great. Oh, sweet. You got a. So all of my friends who've graduated and left are so jealous that I'm still here. Yeah. And there it's constantly. I'm just looking for a way to get back and looking for a way to get back. And I think it goes back to back when I was a student recruiter. At the end of all of my tours, I would say, look, you all can go anywhere and receive an education, but you can come to Auburn, receive an education and make this place your home. Yeah, but you can't really do that a lot of other places. So I think we've all had. Yeah, I honestly I never thought I'd be back. Not because I didn't want to, I just didn't, you know, I never thought the stars would necessarily align for it to happen. And I'm very glad that it did because it is. It's a really cool place, like you like like it's one cool place. Being here as a student and being here as an employee. And then now I'm getting like, raise my daughter and have a family here and get to witness it. Like, see my watch my daughter meet Aubie. Yeah. There's like so many incredible things that I'm very glad that I get to experience that if I hadn't been lucky enough to be able to come back and I would have missed out, I wouldn't even know I missed out on it. You know, it's been interesting to your point to see how the community has changed over the years to the positive. And I would argue that when I was, coming out of school, that a young professional environment, it was there, but I wouldn't call it thriving. And now it's just this really attractive place not only to even stay, but maybe you go away for two years and you come back. And I think it's just been really cool to see the town, grow into that in a really healthy way. And then once you get post undergraduate or even graduate two two degrees up. Here, shout out easy. Yeah. But once you get past that, you also see this whole surrounding area of campus called community. Oh, yeah. That, like, is really fun. Yeah. You know, and there's stuff to do outside of the university and even, like doing stuff with the university changes because it's a different dynamic, because you're not a student, you're an employee or, just a citizen of the area. So it's been, it's been really cool to experience that, too. And you're in a big part of like in, like Auburn advancement as a whole, but specifically what you kind of is a big part of growing that and kind of shaping what the future of Auburn will be and kind of looks like we. Really believe that, it's not enough to expect our alumni to come back here. And let's just do a quick hypothetical, okay? Love it. Okay. Let us take me. Okay. I'm in my 30s. I'm not going to say if I'm up or down on that decade, but I'm in my 30s. I've got a soon to be seven year old girl and a soon to be five year old boy. And, shout out to Addelyn and Shepherd. And so I will say that I, in fact, let's say I lived in Dallas, Texas, and I'm at the like even right now. Like I'm at the like, you know, I work what I consider to be, you know, pretty hard and as we all do, and I've got young kids. And so when I'm not working, I try and I fail at this, but I try to really engage with my family in a very intentional way. And that's the beauty of living in Auburn. But if I'm in Dallas, so my capacity here's a point. My capacity of time is extremely limited. So my ability, even if I have the finite resources, my ability to give back to Auburn, it's just limited by time. Yeah. Our. Our most scarce resource. And so that person that I just described, that hypothetical deserves to be connected and engaged to Auburn just as much as the person who has capacity of time to get back to campus. And so what I've often said is it's our job, regardless of what stage of life or phase of life that I talked through earlier, that you're in, regardless of where you live. We now have five regional. We just started this October 1st. We now have five regional engagement officers that are leveraging over our 100 club and affiliate network as a part of the Auburn Alumni Association, to go out and connect and utilize our volunteer network to meet Auburn family members who are otherwise not connected back to the institution and find out from you. What are you passionate about? How do you want to stay connected? And by the way, you can stay connected. Slash engaged right where you are, regardless of your ability from a time standpoint to give back to campus. One of my favorite things that I often say that you too have heard at nauseum. Auburn athletics. Yep, famously quoted by David Housel is the front porch to the institution? I could not agree more. That's a. Great analogy. It's beautiful. If we had if that's the front porch, what does engagement slash and one night engagement mean? It means inviting you from the front porch inside the house. And so we want you to not be just connected or engaged back to Auburn at a point in time. We want you to be connected and engaged on an ongoing basis. Wooo! that's getting me fired up! That's good. Yeah. Well, how about this? That was a long time. I'll put you a little bit on the spot here. Okay. As we're kind of closing in on our abbreviated, if you will. He's been looking at his clock a lot. You just to be sure you get the timer going. I'm just keep an eye on it. If we could give some of the people listening to some agency themselves, what is maybe the best way to. Yeah, to engage themselves. Obviously, you and your team are doing a lot of work of reaching those people. But if someone wants to do that themselves and reach out and get connected, what would be the best way they can do that? Yeah. Reach out to us, through our social channels, through any of our regional engagement officers. So by that region engagement model that I describe, we cover the entire country. Heck, yeah. And the easiest way to kind of get connected to one of those individuals is really to kind of raise your hand at one of the local clubs or affiliate groups that are within your respective geographical area. And if you're like, I don't know where that is, we've got them all listed on our website. Just go to the Auburn Alumni Association's web page and we've got them always that you can kind of find, some contact information there. My email address is Kurt, K-U-R-T . Sasser S-A-S-S-E-R at auburn.edu if you want if you want to get to know more, if you're like, hey, I'm really interested. I really want to connect. Email me. We will get you plugged in. Beautiful. There you go. People are wonderful. Also, I want to give a shout out here. I love the sock game. By the way. It's the holiday. Season. That's a great thing. I love it. Yeah, they told me. I think you guys told me to wear an auburn polo for the camera, right? And then, you know. But it is bold. Call on the footies because it's it's chilly out. I took one step out of my house this morning and I was like, well, but it's not. But I do this. I don't want to go back in. Right. I notice I didn't make a change. Yeah, yeah. That's it. So I'm committed. I do that with I've got a quarter zip on. I did that with the jacket. I mean it's I think high 50, low of 26 I mean it's frigid. Yeah. And it's kind of. For an Alabama boy here now. For an Alabama boy it is frigid. It is. Might as well be zero. Yeah. And I needed a jacket and I did not get. One less than I was in Vegas two weeks ago for a work trip. Humblebrag. Oh, yeah. Well, you know it. Yeah. And, the desert gets cold. But let me tell you, I don't know if it's just that there's moisture in the air in the south getting close to do anything. Close, doing some imaginary science, I. Think I am, I think I am, but it's it's freezing here. It's the humidity, right? Yes, it has to be. It has, it has to. Yeah. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't either. A lot of people say, hey, they'll ask a question and my confidence is like a 12 out of ten on it. And I'm just like, boom, answer got it? They go, are you sure? I go, no, no. My personality trait, I think, is why I ended up in the seat that I'm currently sitting in is I just make a snap judgment on anything immediately. And then that's the whole I'm down on period. Yeah. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable I am on the subject, that's who I am. And at my core. Do we have time for one last story? Of course. Please bring it on. You can say no. I mean, if I. If I can say yes and then I'll just cut it later. Okay. So young development officer. I'm out in Houston, Texas with, David Maddox and Rob Wellbaum and I'm a I'm a business major. Name drop. Man. Yeah, you drop the mic. And so I'm, I've engaged this Auburn parent, and this Auburn parent runs a manufacturing engineering firm in the oil and gas industry in Houston. Obviously, that makes a lot of sense. And we're going through and it's just like all technical. And what this company does is they take, a drill and they take a plot of land or area where they think there's oil and they go down and they use all these gyro thingamajig and they map it out. And through their technology, they can say, with a degree of certainty, we believe that you're going to be able to source this amount of oil from this specific area. So they're explaining this to us. And he, the parent, has told us about, this specific drill, that and how it works. And he's kind of get a model out and he's, you know, got it in his hands and shown us how it works. And my confidence that leads me astray sometimes goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it like it does this this this and this and this. And this guy was kind of, you know, a a bigger guy, very muscular. He looks at me just dead serious. Not even kind of a disclaimer. No. And Rob Well, Rob Wellbaum that that story happened ten years ago. Rob Wellbaum to this day, loves to remind me of that story. When I open up my mouth too soon. The a that is a beautiful. Yeah. You're just confident. Yeah. It's it's not a bad thing. No. Well, I just want to say, you know, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having ended up not being as abbreviated as we. So there you go. We managed to. Stretch it out. Anything you want. It will not hurt my feelings. No. It is. Okay. Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for what you do for Auburn. Thank you. All. And I appreciate you sharing, your stories with us today. Yeah. Hey, shout out to you all. This is a good thing. Appreciate you all taking it upon yourself to make make it a thing. We have to think creatively about how we engage and communicate with our Auburn family. And you guys put on that hair every day. Grateful. Well, hey, you know, next time we have a scheduling mishap, we'll get you in as well. I'll say yes, I love it. Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Everything Auburn. We want to give a special shout out to WEGL for allowing us to use their space once again. We hope that all of you have a safe and happy holiday season. And War Eagle. War Eagle War Eagle