The YSE Office of Development and Alumni services seeks a Research Assistant to primarily support digital community management across our alumni engagement platforms. As time allows the Research Assistant will also assist in archival & records projects such as implementing a system to manage historic photos and digital assets and archive physical records for posterity. This role is ideal for a student who enjoys content creation, communications, and community building. 

We are a hardworking and caring team who love what we do and the School. 

Digital Alumni Community Management (Alumnifire & Social Media) 

Platform Care & Content Quality 

The research assistant will help keep Alumnifire and other DAS platforms vibrant, accurate, and easy for alumni to use. Tasks may include: 

    Review the questionnaire used to join Alumnifire for consistency, redundancy, and user friction, and suggest improvements.  

    Retire older job posts and record them in a shared tracking spreadsheet so our listings stay current and useful. 

    Encourage Alumnifire users to add photos and keep their profiles up to date. 

    Relying on examples created by DAS staff, standardize regional groups on Alumnifire. 

    Add and maintain pictures for all employers on Alumnifire. 

    Coordinate with Alumnifire support to clean up repeated or inconsistent organization names. 

    Identify duplicate Alumnifire profiles and guide profile owners on how to merge or remove extras. 

    On other platforms, assist in building and maintaining an interconnected social media presence to engage with alumni, promote events, and share updates about our alumni community. 

Community Content & Engagement  

The student worker will help keep our online alumni spaces lively, relevant, and welcoming by finding and sharing content on a variety of topics for specific groups of alumni and the entire alumni community. This may include: 

    Identify events that may be relevant to alumni based on area of professional interest, geographic region, class year, identity, or other factors. 

    Surface news stories and updates that specific alumni groups would care about. 

    Note updates related to alumni including professional accomplishments and obituaries. 

    Post jobs shared via other Yale platforms or sent to DAS. 

    Create series of “evergreen” posts for routine/scheduled sharing, such as adapting existing alumni profiles, YSE history snippets, videos, story maps, etc. for different platforms as needed. 

    Interact with posts from alumni and keep conversations going in a warm and thoughtful way, involving DAS staff where needed.  

    Browse Yale Connect, YSE calendar, YAA calendar, Yale public calendar for alumni-relevant events. 

    Coordinate and encourage posting and engagement by Learning Community leaders in thematic groups. 

Archival Preservation & School History 

The following tasks may be undertaken as time permits: 

Archives and Preservation 

    Gather and categorize physical records and photos housed in the Alumni Office. 

    Collaborate with the YSE Arts & Archives Committee and Yale Manuscripts & Archives to request archiving and digitization of documents, photographs, and memorabilia. 

    Prepare, label, and inventory materials for digitization or transfer. 

    Maintain tracking systems to monitor digitization status and record locations related to YSE. 

Photo + Digital Asset Organization & Tagging 

    Consult with DAS, Communications, and IT staff to help create a structured, searchable system for historical files, photos, and records.  

    Assist in the sorting, grouping, naming, file structure, tagging and metadata, links, and QC of photos into a consistent system. 

    Digitize physical items prior to archival, upload and organize digital files from CDs, drives, or other storage locations. 

YSE School History Content  

    Identify stories, profiles, and milestones for reuse /syndication across digital platforms. 

    Develop a structured internal archive of book-derived content. 

    Excerpt and adapt pieces for Alumnifire, newsletters, and social media. 

    Coordinate and implement creation, updates, and edits of Wikipedia pages for notable alumni and the School, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and proper citations.