1994: Leading Princeton into the Internet Age

TigerNet techie
Jolanne Stanton '77 put together a vast computer network that keeps alumni connected

"One word, Dan, e-mail." With this pithy observation to Dan White '65, the director of the Alumni Council, Jolanne Stanton '77 launched in 1994 an extraordinary new way for more than 14,000 Princeton alumni, faculty, staff, and students to get together: Tigernet. With chat groups ranging in topic from the Asian experience to venture capital and women's issues, Tigernet offers a new community through not only the discussion forums, but also an e-mail service, an on-line directory, and, coming soon, the potential for courses delivered over the Web.

The occasion that sparked Stanton's comment was a visit by White to the Princeton Club of Western Washington, of which Stanton was president. White was drumming up business and soliciting ideas for ways to celebrate the 250th. Specifically, he asked the assembled group for ways to bring widely scattered alumni together. Tigernet, it¹s fair to say, has succeeded beyond anyone's imagining. Through Tigernet, Princetonians are finding internships, jobs, and apartments, setting up seminars on the arts, and getting reconnected over issues like single parenting and fathers staying at home. The new technology thus serves a very old need: keeping Princeton alumni connected to the university in ways that transcend time and distance.

Stanton became a high-tech apostle to the university through a decidedly circuitous, low-tech route. After a brief stint at Scribner's as a reader, she landed in Business Week magazine's international advertising department, designing multipage advertorials. She married Jim Stanton, then one of the ad reps, and moved with him to Singapore, where she worked as a freelance writer, photographer, and consultant. Two kids and nearly a decade later, in 1985, they moved back to the U.S. looking for a place to call home.

"We went on a city-shopping tour," recalls Stanton, "and we picked Seattle as the best place to live."

For several years, Stanton worked with the Seattle Art Museum developing curriculum on Japan for elementary-school aged students, and other educational ventures. Today, she is president of Musements, a consulting company that specializes in new media strategy, marketing, and training. Stanton got reconnected herself with Princeton in 1994 through the local alumni association. And then came the 250th, Dan White, and Tigernet.

"My relationship with Princeton had been through my class," she says, "but I knew that there were a lot of Princetonians I had an affinity with that weren't necessarily in my class. It was my kids who taught me about computers and e-mail." She spent many hours proposing, designing, discussing, and modifying the original idea after that fateful remark, until it was launched with the technical help of the Alumni Council and several university departments. CIT did the programming.

The first group established was one on career networking. Now, there are more than 20 groups, and new ones are being added all the time. And Tigernet's influence has spread well beyond the Princeton community itself. Stanton presented the concept to a college and university association, and a number of universities have begun similar on-line groups including Harvard Business School and Harvard College.

Stanton today is the chair of a technological advisory committee at the Alumni Council, but in spite of the increased formality of her role, she works to maintain the grass roots origins of Tigernet.

"We added a note to the opening page that read, 'if you want to start another group, call me,'" Stanton says. "They did." The discussion groups are managed by alumni volunteers, not the university, and the reach of Tigernet is thus limited only by the time and interest of the whole alumni body within reach of a computer.

--Nicholas Morgan '75 /Princeton Classnotes