At the end of last year, we asked you, our alumni, to tell us what you think of the content we share across our platforms.
We really value the views and ideas of our alumni community, and we want to continue to bring you news and content that is of value and interest to you.
Here are the survey results:
- Our most popular channels are our Aluminate newsletter, Facebook and Cumbria Network.
- You engage with our content for; nostalgia, updates on reunions and events, university development updates and updates on your classmates.
- You love short reads, images and short form video best.
- The types of content you love best are: Historical articles about the university and campus, alumni profiles, nostalgic content, and reunion stories.
What you would like to see more of
- More careers content: further careers, mid-level careers, and advancing in your career. International careers and jobs, CPD, and certification.
- More profiles on alumni, university staff and students and the impact they are making.
- Content about our archives.
- Content on university research.
- Nostalgic content about your own era.
- Information about the Cumbrian community and local area.
- New programmes and courses.
- You want to hear about getting more involved and how to network.
You asked we did
Contributing content - Many of you stated that you would be interested in contributing content. We really appreciate this, and we will write to those individuals about their ideas.
Nostalgic content – You want to see your classmates and your era. We appreciate that our throwback posts can sometimes appear biased towards certain decades or campuses. The majority of the images we share come from alumni and former staff sharing them with us. If you don’t see your years represented, we simply don’t have any. We would love to share content from different years, so please do send us your student snaps! We are working on ways to bring you more specific content so watch this space.
Inconsistent, broad and random - Some people commented that our content is inconsistent, a bit random and too broad! Well, we agree! Our alumni community span many decades, five campuses, three legacy institutions and the university – it's also what makes us unique. We are all at different stages in our careers and lives, and live worldwide, so you’ll appreciate that finding content to suit all can be a challenge. We will work harder to ensure that you know where to find the content that is relevant for you and look at changing up the focus of our channels.
Careers content - You asked for more careers content, you want content for mature established careers, career changers, advice on networking, CPD and certification. We will endeavour to look to ways we can deliver this. Within our alumni community, we have many experts in the above, so we will be appealing to our network for blog posts covering specific topics.
Classmate content - You asked for content on your classmates and help tracing fellow students. We will be appealing to our alumni community for more profiles. To help you trace your classmates, we have the Cumbria Network, where you can search our directory. We have a contact service where we can help you tracing your classmates if they are on our database. Simply drop us an email. Our aim is to hold regular Alumni open days, and we will plan more of these if they are still proving popular. If you would be interested in a reunion for your year group, we can help with that. We can get back in touch with your friends and help you organise your event. Get in touch.
Interaction between alumni - You asked for more ways to interact with each other. We would love to help facilitate more of this. This is why we have the Cumbria Network, which allows you to contact alumni directly and start discussions on our feed.
More profiles - You asked for more staff and alumni profiles, yes please. We would love to do more of this, and we will be reaching out to our community for this. For anybody who would like to submit a profile, you can find this here.
We love all these ideas, and we hope to bring you more fresh content for 2026.