More than 30 alumni returned to Alfred University Friday for the university’s third Mentorship Day, meeting students and discussing career-related issues that ranged from how to thrive as a first-generation college student to professional opportunities in the world of non-profits.
Alumni Krystina Gauer ’21 MBA ’22 (left), Jeff Klossner ’19 (center) and Matt Wedzik ’23, MBA ’24 participate in a panel discussion held as part of Alfred University’s third annual Mentorship Day on Friday, Sept. 25.
Patty St. George ’89, delivered the keynote address for Mentorship Day, reviewing facets of mentorship and leadership. An undergraduate accounting major, St. George is now a senior partner with the international accounting firm KPMG LLC, where she specializes in management consulting.
Her clients have included the U.S. Department of Defense, and she currently serves as lead account partner for the U.S. Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. St. George, who serves also as a member of Alfred University’s board of trustees, has worked for KPMG for 30 years.
She drew on her professional experience in describing how effective leadership encourages collaboration between separate areas of an organization: engineering, communications, and finance, for example. Good leaders, she emphasized, find ways to encourage the sharing of professional perspectives, drawing creative energy from the mixing of different points of view and areas of expertise.
Reflecting on her own career with KPMG, she called her professional life “a long and winding road” that began with her experience as an accountant and auditor.
“I developed my business acumen through auditing,” she said. She built on her auditing expertise to move towards management consulting.
“You don’t get to help a client fix their problems as an auditor,” she said. “Consulting allows us to build solutions to problems, and each project helps us build for the next problem.”
Alfred University alumni Joe Copp ’24, MBA ’25 (left), Olivia Gilbert ’24 (center), and Patricia St. George ’89 (right) talk with Nate Marrero ’23, M.S. ’25, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering during the university’s third annual Mentorship Day on Friday, Sept. 25. Copp, Gilbert, and St. George (who delivered the keynote address for the event) were alumni mentors who participated in workshops and panel discussions.
St. George’s address followed a day of panels, workshops, and networking. Mentorship Day organizer Diana Maguire, professor of management and leadership in the College of Business, noted the idea of inviting alumni back to campus to share their experiences with students originated with a visit by Alfred University faculty and administration to the University of New Mexico, which was hosting a workshop on mentorship.
The event keeps growing, Maguire said, noting the number of alumni visiting the campus has increased dramatically since the first Mentorship Day in 2024. Thirteen different topics were covered during Friday’s event. “In our first two years we had half that,” she noted.
Panels and workshops included following subjects: The value of mentoring and mentor mapping, women in leadership, career possibilities in the non-profit sector, thriving as a first-generation student, essential skills for success, peer-to-peer mentoring, managing career changes, entrepreneurship, art as an industry, from engineer to manager, careers in technical sales, and trailblazing: being the first in your role.
Alumni mentors, along with staff and faculty, gather outside the Olin Building following the presentation of workshops and panel discussions held as part of Alfred University’s third annual Mentorship Day on Friday, Sept. 25.
Alfred University alumni may remember their alma mater as a place where mentoring developed organically between students and their faculty, in addition to staff members, administrators and other students. The first Mentorship Day sought to build on that tradition and further energize the mentoring culture.
From Maguire’s perspective, the third Mentorship Day showed the tradition and culture expanding.
