For anyone in higher ed, If an alum has received two degrees from your institution at different times, most likely and undergraduate and graduate degree respectively, which education/school record do you code as Primary alumni information? I'm trying to think about where this might come in to play in pulling queries, exports, reports, etc. but I'm sure I'm not thinking of everything. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks, KtR

I'm not in higher ed now, but I used to work at a university. When I was there, the hierarchy was 1) Donor specified preference. 2) Medical or Law degree. 3) First degree. If the donor specified a particular preference, we would always go with that. If they hadn't, but had a Medical degree or a Law degree, we would use that as the primary. If they had both a Medical degree and a Law degree (MD, JD) or they had two Medical or Law degrees (MD, PhD) or they had two or more degrees that did not include a Med or Law degree, we would use their first degree. Drew J. Drew Allen Children's Hospital of Philadelphia [Email Removed] Check out the user run RE Forum at http://www.blackbus.org/ . Check out the Crystal Reports blog "Crystal Clear" at http://www.blackbus.org/blogs/viewblog.php?userid=63

We use first degree alumni obtained as primary regardless if it's undergraduate or graduate level. Rick Baker Systems Specialist, Institutional Advancement Gallaudet University

When introducing Net Community to our system, we had this dilemma too, as only the primary record will link into NC. There are two issues commonly occuring: 1. Alumni contact us regarding their postgraduate qualification and it's absence on our system if we leave the undergrad as the main degree. 2. Alumni contact us regarding their undergraduate degree's absence on the site where we have coded the postgrad qualification as the primary. It's a judgement call. There's a logical arguement for both: To have the highest qualification displayed as it's the most recent one; Or to keep people within their graduating classes, as an undergrad degree, in the UK at least, is seen as the main one. Whichever you choose to run with, you'll still get complaints from your alumni that their qualification isn't displayed correctly etc. It can also affect querying for reunion events, so think carefully about your choice and what you really use this field for. The problem is that one has to be marked as a primary - you can't have two of the same level. In my opinion, BB need to change the way the education details work, as more and more people have multiple qualifications from varing institues. There is a work round for NC, but the constituent has to input the details themselves at the user end and it can be complex to explain how this is done.

We use first degree received as the primary alum record. We have found that most people want to be associated with that class when getting calls for reunions, giving and any other associations with the school. We do have a few who would rather be associated with their second degree class, and we just manually switch the primary alum record to that one at their request. It's been the policy for the 9 years we've been on RE and this has never come up as a topic for changing. HTH, laura Laura A. Caswell Information Technology Worcester State College Worcester, MA 01602 [Email Removed] (508) 929-8867

Years ago our university offered Master's degrees but now only undergrad. We make the undergrad the Primary so they will be grouped with their peers for reunions. We also have BBNC and have tried to explain on the website that if they have more than one degree from OBU, they must choose ONE to identify with. However, our BBNC set-up DOES allow the viewing of non-Primary education records. We very much wanted to collect info on our graduates' post-OBU degrees at other institutions for networking, fund-raising, and mentoring uses. Our consultant came up with a way to do this and our alumni have successfully followed the data entry instructions. When processed thru the plug-in new non-Primary education records are created in RE. We had to allow users the right to add to our school table, which requires regular checking and clean-up. I've had several discussions with folks at BB about the need to address the issues of multiple degrees and majors in general, and particularly for BBNC users. I hope future versions will show improvements. I agree that the work-arounds are very awkward. Shirley Hardin Development Officer Annual Fund & Database Management Ouachita Baptist University [i]--- Edited at 8/13/2007 5:44:34 PM by Shirley Hardin[/i] [i]--- Edited at 8/13/2007 5:46:02 PM by Shirley Hardin[/i]

We're a medical school and have education records for MD degrees, PhDs and Master's degrees, Residencies, Physician Assistants, and Nurse Anesthetists. If the MD was earned here, then that is the primary education record, even if they went on to complete a residency or earned a PhD first.

We offer multiple degrees, and use the highest degree earned at our institution as the primary alumni record. However, we also track their undergraduate and other grad degrees, even from other institutions. The problem we run into is, when we run a directory and want to include all the degrees earned from our institution (and many alumni have more than one from us), we also end up with all the degrees earned at other institutions. This involves a lot of cleanup of the final document. I agree that there needs to be a way to mark two primary degrees, or a primary and secondary. Question: Do other institutions track degrees from other schools? I've never been sure if we do this because we can, or because we legally have to.

When you use export and add education fields to the export, it allows you to filter the education records based on school name. If you are not using export, you should be. Drew J. Drew Allen Children's Hospital of Philadelphia [Email Removed] Check out the user run RE Forum at http://www.blackbus.org/ . Check out the Crystal Reports blog "Crystal Clear" at http://www.blackbus.org/blogs/viewblog.php?userid=63

We have a large number of dual degree holders. We created an editable add/sal that lists the graduate's name and all degrees he/she earned from our instititution since most of the time the fundraisers want to know that information. We call it publication name and it's very handy. We use it in reports, directories, queries, etc., and to prepare Class Notes for the alumni magazine. It's often how we quickly search on dual degree holders. But I agree, it would make things much easier to manage if Raiser's Edge considered the relationship with the institution as a whole rather than a relationship to a specific degree. Internally, we have a hierarchy for assigning the primary relationship (which we do not share outside of our department as the deans would become upset) as the degrees can be from different schools but may be of equal levels. Debra Holcomb Director of Annual Giving Golden Gate University 536 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94105 v: (415) 442-7829 e: [Email Removed]