Bringing Alumni Back to the Classroom, Virtually

In an effort to engage former students with events on campus, Colgate University is using Webcast technology to allow even the most remote alumni to watch and participate when prominent writers visit the school.

The program — called Living Writers — is hosted by the streaming Internet television platform Livestream.

So far there have been two lectures, one by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz and another by the husband and wife writers John and Carrie Brown. Tim Mansfield, the director of alumni affairs, said 75 people watched the entire lecture virtually.

While anyone can watch the broadcast, and even pose questions for the authors in a chat room, Mr. Mansfield says the real goal is to connect with former students.

“There’s a real appetite for intellectual engagement among our alumni,” he says. “They miss the classroom and the Colgate liberal-arts experience, and now we have the means to give it to them again.”

Mr. Mansfield says that while the class might be costly for the English department — authors don’t come cheap — the decision to pay for the universal broadcast was a “no brainer” since the school already had the technology and had to pay only a “negligible” monthly fee to run the site on Livestream.