…In the case of National Intelligence University, that describes establishing a viable alumni organization, which didn’t come to pass until more than a half-century after the school was first established in 1962. There were a few false starts along the way.
The NIU Alumni Association was formally established in October 2015 as a formal program of the 501(c)(3) NIU Foundation. A year earlier, the founding board chairman of the NIU Foundation, Admiral Mike McConnell (USN, Ret) Class of 1971 held a breakfast conference call with a small group of alumni and challenged them to develop a proposal for a formal alumni association and bring it to the Board the following year for consideration.
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The alumni “Charter Group” consisted of alumni in Miami, San Diego, Huntsville AL, Virginia, Maryland and New York City and over the course of monthly meetings across three time zones, they cobbled together the structure and bylaws for the proposed alumni association. It was at the fall meeting of the NIU Foundation Board that James-Christian Blockwood ’07 presented the charter group recommendations to the Board. The Foundation Board was pleased with the proposal and voted unanimously to add the Alumni Association to the Foundation with James-Christian Blockwood as the first president.
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Prior to the current organization, there were a few attempts to bring alumni together over the years, none of which were formally chartered and none of which achieved more than temporary success. In the early 1990s some Defense Intelligence College leaders and allies attempted to cobble together an “Association of Graduates (AOG),” and in the mid-90s a few alumni created an alumni networking group called “the Society of Young Intelligence Professionals.” In the late 1990s, the JMIC Foundation – which no longer exists and is unrelated to the current NIU Foundation – created membership categories for alumni, sponsored events, and had a few membership benefits, but the organization evolved in a different direction and ties with the school were severed in 2010.
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In 2023, as the University celebrates 60 years of intelligence education, the NIU Alumni Association of the NIU Foundation has a growing membership of over 2,000 members, it has a formal charter and board of officers, it supports alumni events, provides mentoring opportunities, and is nurturing the development of regional alumni networks.
