Alumnae Quarterly Policies

The Alumnae Quarterly does not accept advertisements.

The Alumnae Quarterly encourages readers to share their achievements and updates with the marketing and communications staff. The Alumnae Association reserves the right to determine the channel best suited to promote alum achievements, including the Alumnae Quarterly, the Alumnae Association website, social media, video, or broadcast email.

Story ideas are also welcome and should include a specific topic as well as potential alum experts and the relevance of the topic to Mount Holyoke alums. We rarely accept unsolicited manuscripts. All submissions will be edited for accuracy, clarity, quality, and length.

Email the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu) or call our main number at 413-538-2300. To share your news and photos on social media, visit our pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Note: We encourage all alums who are sharing updates with the Quarterly staff to also share this news with their class scribe for possible inclusion in the class notes column. For more information on how to contact your scribe, see Class Notes, below.

Quarterly issues from 2005 to the present may be read here. All issues from 1917 through 1994 are also available via the Alumnae Quarterly Digital Archive. 

The class notes section occupies about 40 pages — or half — of every issue of the Alumnae Quarterly. Class notes for each class are written by scribes, who are elected by their classmates at reunion every five years. The Alumnae Association sends email requests for news about a month before class notes are due from the scribe to the Quarterly editor. Class scribes are also encouraged to reach out to their classmates in other ways. Scribes are free to share the news of their classmates as they choose, provided they keep to the word count.

Space in class notes is limited. For more than 30 years class scribes have adhered to a tiered word-count system based on the total number of alums per class. With more than 30,000 alums and nearly 75 current classes with class notes columns, we need to continue this procedure to ensure that each class has the opportunity to see their news in print. Because of these space limitations, we are unable to print poems or photos within the printed class notes section. However, we can offer photos to be included in the online version of class notes, which can be read at magazine.mtholyoke.edu. 

You may share any news or updates with your class scribe. Class notes is not limited to news of promotions and life celebrations. Please share with your scribe anything you would like your fellow alums to know about your life now. Maybe you recently moved or are still in school or got married or divorced. Maybe you don’t have a life event to share but you want to report that you were reminiscing about attending class in Clapp Hall. Send along your news, big or small. Class notes often include tributes to deceased classmates (see more under In Memoriam and Tributes).

Send your news directly to your class scribe. Find their name and email in the scribe directory. If your scribe doesn’t have an email address, you can obtain their phone number and mailing address from Alumnae Information Services (ais@mtholyoke.edu) or by calling 413-538-2303. If you are submitting news about another alum, please make sure you have her permission before submitting the news to us.

For classes without class scribes, news may be sent directly to the Quarterly offices at classnotes@mtholyoke.edu or Alumnae Quarterly, Mary Woolley Hall, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075.

To share your news and photos on social media, visit our pages on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Feel free to distribute paper or electronic copies of Alumnae Quarterly articles for personal or business purposes. To reprint an article in another publication, however, you must obtain permission from the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu).

The Alumnae Quarterly welcomes letters. Letters should run not more than 200 words in length, refer to material published in the magazine, and include the writer’s full name. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.

Letters to the editor may be emailed to the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu) or mailed to Alumnae Quarterly, Alumnae Association/Mary Woolley Hall, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486. Please include your full name (first name, birth name, and current last name, if different), class year, and the town and state/country where you live.

The name and date of death of every deceased alumna is listed on the In Memoriam page.

If you are aware of an alum’s death, please send the alum’s full name (first name, birth name, and current last name, if different) and class year, date of death, and obituary or other details about their life to Alumnae Information Services (ais@mtholyoke.edu) or call 413-538-2303. They will confirm the alum’s death and forward the information to the class scribe so a tribute can be printed in the Quarterly.

Class scribes are responsible for reporting the death of a classmate to their class by writing a brief tribute. Each tribute can be up to 150 words and does not count against the column word count. Scribe’s may find the deceasing report to be a reference for writing tributes, or they may reach out to classmates to send in remembrances or to write a particular tribute. The following protocols should be taken when writing a tribute:

• Only submit a tribute if you have received a deceasing report
• Include names of immediate family, if applicable
• Include names of MHC relatives and class years
• Do not include requests for donations — we cannot print them per the magazine’s nonprofit postal agreement
• Do not include the mailing address for next-of-kin, unless a family member expressly requests it

The Alumnae Quarterly accepts pitches and submissions for its “alum expert” page. Submissions should include a brief bio of relevant expertise and clear, step-by-step “how-to” instructions on how readers can benefit from the expertise. Examples can be read here. To pitch your area of expertise, please contact the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu).

The Alumnae Quarterly accepts submissions of personal essays for its My Voice page. Essays should be no more than 600 words in length and should address a focused topic around the writer’s personal experience that is relevant to the greater alum community. Examples can be read here. To pitch your topic or to submit an essay, please contact the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu).

The Alumnae Quarterly publishes obituaries for members of the Mount Holyoke community under the following circumstances:

Alumna, meeting at least two of the following criteria:

• Spent career working for the College or Association (as staff or faculty)
• Served as a consistent volunteer (class agent, reunion committee, regional club)
• Served on the Board of the Alumnae Association (VP or president)
• Served on the Board of Trustees of the College

• Received a prestigious MHC award (Alumnae Medal of Honor; Trustee Medal for Distinguished Service)

Staff/faculty, meeting at least one of the following criteria:

• Professor emeritus (spent career at the College)
• Current tenured professor
• Held high-level staff position (i.e., director of financial aid, dean of faculty, special assistant to president)
• Alumna of the College

Obituaries are written by Quarterly staff, run no more than 250 words, and are accompanied by a photograph when one of suitable quality is available. Obituaries appear in the print magazine, either in the news section or directly after class notes and beside the In Memoriam listing of deceased alums. (In Memoriam is a listing of all alums who have been confirmed deceased since the previous issue of the magazine was printed.)

Please note, a deceased alumna may also be the subject of a 150-word tribute written by a class scribe and included in class notes. In the event that a deceased alumna was affiliated with a class year for which we do not have a class scribe, Quarterly staff will write a two-sentence notice of death to be published in the class notes section of the magazine. Quarterly staff will write these notices when the alumna was deceased within a year of notification.

The Alumnae Quarterly highlights a selection of books in the magazine written by Mount Holyoke alums and faculty of the College. Books are selected based on date of publication as well as general interest to the majority of and availability to its readers. All books submitted will be included in our online books listing.

To submit your publication, please contact the editor (quarterly@mtholyoke.edu). Please include publication information, a brief synopsis of the book, a brief bio, and a jpg of the book’s cover, if available.

As a general rule the Quarterly does not repurpose material for print in the magazine. This includes but is not limited to book excerpts, speeches, articles written elsewhere.

Exceptions may be made in the case where a particular piece of work is uniquely relevant to the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly audience. Such exceptions will be decided upon by the Alumnae Quarterly staff and will be shared with the editorial review board through the editorial calendar.