“It’s truly a unique experience, a rare thing,” he said. “All sorts of things happen on campus, marriages blossom, business partnerships start, this is just a way to further it.”

Brown said Spartans get along automatically because they know the culture of the school.

“We’re just a kin,” he said. “We all know how to be serious, work hard, and have a good time.”

The biggest function of MSUAA is to help the careers of fellow Spartans by networking, Brown said. The most common usage comes from graduates less than 10 years removed from MSU.

“Quite often, new alumni think what they want to do and where they want to go,” Brown said. “Wherever they end up, we can connect them with a group of well connected, well established Spartans who can help them get started in their work and personal lives.”

John Hill, director of the MSU Alumni Career Services, said most alumni use the association as a way to build as many relationships as possible, connect with employers and create more opportunities for themselves and other MSU graduates. He said using networking sites, such as Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com, can unite alumni anywhere. MSUAA currently runs the largest LinkedIn.com group, with more than 10,000 members.

“As a service, we can’t help all 460,000 individual alum,” Hill said. “But we can guide to those who can. Invariably, you’ll have someone who knows how to help everywhere.”

Other services offered by the Alumni Career Services are showing alumni how to be effective communicators, résumé critiques and workshops and strategies for career advancement, Hill said.

Networking works best when there are as many alumni as possible in the system, Hill said. Most MSUAA members were involved as students, a key factor in staying connected after school.

“If we’ve lost them as alumni, it’s because we didn’t connect with them as students,” he said.

To get students started early, the Student Alumni Foundation, or SAF, connects current Spartans with alumni as early as they set foot on campus. SAF members are comprised of enrolled MSU students who work closely with MSUAA and University Development to connect students with alumni, said Dan DiMaggio, director of SAF.

“They have the opportunity to network with alumni that are already in the workforce,” he said. “MSU has thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of alumni that are just waiting to help students that are in a position that they once were.”