Alumni Mentors

Because mentoring is an important part of a students success, we strive to make alumni available to our students as mentors either by geographic locations, career type, special interest, nationality, or other groupings as the need arises. Currently looking for alumni mentors in: 

  • GEOGRAPHIC AREAS:  alumni living or working in Washington, DC, Chicago, New York City area, San Francisco, anywhere in Australia
  • CAREER FIELDS:  alumni who have served in the Peace Corp, AmeriCorp, Teach For America, Red Cross
  • SPECIALTY AREAS:  alumni who have expertise in obtaining CFA, CPA, CMA or other certifications relevant to the field of Economics
  • INTERNATIONAL: alumni familiar with obtaining sponsorship for international students and/or employers that hire alumni needing sponsorship

Alumni to Alumni

Did you lose track of a fellow Economics student that you spent a lot of time with while here on campus? We may be able to help!  We get frequent inquiries from alumni asking if we have current information on other alumni.  We do our research, see if we are connected with them or have current information about them and then reach out to them to ask permission to share their information. Linked-In is a great tool for this and because we have over 5000 connections with our alumni on the site, we can easily make a connection between alumni on there as well.  If you're not already a member of the Linked-In Economics Group, please request to join! Prefer to connect with a person instead of a group, connect here! 

Alumni Panel

Economics students at all levels find alumni panels to be very useful.  We have had some amazing panelists come to the department to talk about more career paths then we knew existed! A typical panel consists of 3-4 alumni that sometimes center around a common career or industry or sometimes around a topic.  The panels are often offered during the Economics 198 undergraduate class and sometimes are held as departmental seminars. 

Attend an Event

Join us for fun!  We host a lively and large homecoming tailgate each October and a large convocation reception each May.  These events are open to all alumni so watch for notices on our social media channels or Events page of the website. 

Be interviewed for a newsletter, webinar or other social media channel

Economics alumni live all over the world!  Economics alumni do interesting jobs and master amazing accomplishments.  We want to feature your news!  We also find that our alumni are really busy and it's also not easy to always make a trip to campus, but technology makes its possible for us to create webinars or do virtual interviews with you about your experiences and share those with students in the classroom or as resources. 

Hire a student or alumni

Check out our Career Networking and Internship page for more information.

Give a gift

Sit on an advisory committee or board

We currently have a 10 member Economics Development Council advisory board consisting of Economic alums. The council has two main meetings in the spring and fall each year focused on developing and supporting ideas for the Department's alumni relations efforts. These devoted alumni build and bridge the connections between our alumni, students, faculty, staff, friends, industry partners and other interested parties. Interested in being considered for the council? 

Special Guests

We sometimes have opportunities for special guests and those may include being a convocation speaker or sitting on the stage during convocation. You may self-nominate or nominate a fellow alumni for consideration of these roles by e-mailing hatchel@illinois.edu. 

Write History

The Department of Economics has a long and interesting history. Currently there are two historians that contribute their time to uncovering interesting facts, photos, writings, among other things, about the Department of Economics. But we also know that our alumni have stories to tell. Interested in sharing?  Send us an e-mail if you'd like to contribute.