After more than two decades working in higher education on the East Coast, new Office of Alumni Engagement Director Mark Forrest is back home in Michigan. He’s in a place where he can easily visit family, watch college football in the largest stadium in the country and get Detroit-made Rock & Rye pop at the grocery store. “That’s my favorite Faygo flavor, hands down. Red Pop is a close second, but I could get that one on the East Coast,” Forrest says. “As the saying goes, there really is no place like home.”
During those 20-plus years away, Forrest led alumni initiatives at George Mason University, The George Washington University and at The University of Maryland-College Park. He organized events, recruited volunteers, raised money, developed alumni boards and connected alumni to student-facing opportunities. His favorite part? “Getting alumni reconnected with their alma mater – I especially enjoy seeing alumni who were hesitant to get involved at first become so enthusiastic. I’m mindful about how much time alumni have and finding the right opportunities for them. But once they see what it’s like to get involved, their contribution often turns into active volunteering, student mentoring and speaking in classrooms.”
Forrest, who started at UM-Dearborn in May, is already looking to link UM-Dearborn’s nearly 70,000 alums with the opportunities right for them. He’s out meeting UM-Dearborn grads at university picnics, gala dinners, anniversary celebrations and greeting them when they come to campus. He’s looking forward to meeting even more alums, faculty, staff and students during Homecoming Week 2025, which starts Sept. 29.
Here are three things to know about Forrest.
An openness to change led Forrest to a career he’s passionate about.
Forrest’s resume is impressive. He has nearly 25 years of higher education experience, 18 of those leading alumni initiatives. Before coming to UM-Dearborn, Forrest was the alumni relations program director for The University of Maryland-College Park’s Robert H. Smith School of Business for five years. Prior to that, he served as the alumni relations director at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and he managed alumni engagement opportunities at The George Washington University for their 275,000 living grads.
He finds purpose in his work – but an alumni relations profession wasn’t Forrest’s original plan. He expected to have a career in accounting and majored in the subject at Western Michigan University, where he attended on a partial scholarship. He interned at a Detroit-based accounting firm for four years and, after graduating from WMU, joined that firm as an auditor. But a couple years in, Forrest realized it wasn’t the career he wanted. “I was good at parts of it, but I wasn’t fulfilled. I went back and thought about everything I enjoyed about college and realized it was helping connect people to opportunities. I was the student voice on university leadership boards. I was very involved in clubs. I felt like I was making a difference,” he says. “I decided I wanted to do something like that again.” Forrest enrolled at Michigan State University in 2000 and earned a Master of Arts in Student Affairs Administration. That degree opened doors and he landed a student activities assistant director job at George Mason University, a position he learned about at a professional conference. That took him out to Fairfax, Virginia in 2003.
The skills he sharpened during those years in student life at George Mason University – connecting people to opportunities that match their interests, managing volunteers, planning events, organizing advisory boards – helped Forrest later transition into the alumni engagement space. “As I got older, I saw the importance of alumni showing students where their degree could take them. As university employees, we can talk about the importance of our degrees all we want to. We can show students how the university ranks on lists. But, for some students, it really doesn’t hit home until a student is speaking with someone who says, ‘I was a student here and I’m now a CEO, director or business owner – and my foundation was this school.’ It’s exciting when you see students and alumni connect like that. I love what I do.”
He’s a Detroiter who has found the right university and the right time.
Forrest grew up on Detroit’s west side and graduated from Renaissance High School. He says his upbringing in the city has given him the tenacity to get things done, find common ground with people and adapt to challenges. “Even though I was gone for 20 years and the city looks completely different from it did when I left, I still carry lessons from it,” he says. “For me, it’s a resilience thing. No matter what, you will push through if you do the right thing.”
Forrest’s family inspired this attitude, encouraging him to reach for his goals and supporting him as he climbed the higher education ladder. Thinking about the support he’d been given and the time he’d been away from family, Forrest made the decision to return to Detroit in late 2024. He wasn’t quite ready to move away from his second home out east, but he needed to come back to Michigan to help care for a family member. The UM-Dearborn opening was timed well with Forrest’s move. “It felt like everything was meant to be. I got settled into a routine helping with my family member’s care and then I found this position where my skills matched in a field I’m passionate about. It’s only 20 minutes from my family,” he says. “I’m happy to be here and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone. Even though I am a proud MSU grad, you can’t deny the strong connections people have with the Block M.”
Now that he’s home, Forrest is getting to know his city again. A few highlights: He attended a Pistons game at Little Caesar's Arena, indulged in his share of Better Made chips and saw the magnificence of the newly restored Michigan Central Station when attending the university’s "Dreams in Practice: Soiree in the City.”
While getting reacquainted with Detroit, he’s also getting to know UM-Dearborn. Forrest experienced that “at home” feeling with campus right away. He already knows that he likes Picasso’s Chicken Caesar Tweener sandwich for lunch. But he’s focused on understanding the university at the core level. While at George Mason as an alumni relations director, Forrest led alumni engagement for an academic unit at one of their regional campuses, so he understands how regional campuses connect to a larger university, but still have their own identity. In an effort to learn more about UM-Dearborn’s campus culture and alumni needs, Forrest is currently meeting with faculty and staff around the university. He calls it his “listening tour.” “Before making any changes, I need to know what people want and need. I’m asking three main questions,” he says. “Number one, I want to know how people have worked with our office in the past. Number two, I want people to share how they want to work with our office moving forward. And, number three, I want input on what kind of things people would like to see alumni get more involved with as volunteers, participants and supporters. This will help me see the priorities, which will help me get to know the university better and make the right decisions for our alumni, faculty, staff and students.”
He wants to know what the Office of Alumni Engagement can do for you.
Forrest is eagerly awaiting his first UM-Dearborn Homecoming Week at the end of the month. He excitedly speaks about meeting the UM-Dearborn Class of 1975, which will happen during the week’s signature Golden Jubilee event. That happens to be the year Forrest’s favorite singer Anita Baker started her career – but that’s not what he’s jazzed about. He wants to hear personal stories from older grads and see how their UM-Dearborn education helped them with their career and life goals. And, of course, he’s eager to learn about the different interests they have so he can further connect them with students and the university.
Through his listening tour, Forrest is talking with faculty across the four colleges to learn what alumni connections would be best for their courses, discussion panels and other academic activities. “I’d like to come up with a comprehensive evergreen list of opportunities for alumni to get involved on campus,” he says. “If we have a list of opportunities, it would allow us to make more meaningful connections in a more efficient manner. It would also help our office see what the university, as a whole, is doing or plans to do so we can build an alumni recruiting strategy around it.”
In an effort to expand brand recognition and UM-Dearborn alumni commitment to their alma mater outside of the region, he’d also like to explore how to increase engagement efforts with alums outside of southeast Michigan. “Many of our alumni stay local, which is great and we appreciate their gifts of time, talent and treasure. We also have grads who moved outside of the area to pursue opportunities – to California, to Washington, D.C., wherever – and we want to give those graduates a way to interact with their university that works best for them,” Forrest says. “They are important members of our university community too.”
Through the people Forrest has met at UM-Dearborn, he’s learned of beloved faculty members, transformative student organization experiences and life-changing mentors. Pulling from his own undergraduate experience, Forrest was inspired by the late Theresa Powell, then WMU vice president for student affairs. Powell guided Forrest when he was a WMU student leader. “She always lent an ear and took time out to give me advice. She even got me extra graduation tickets because I have a large family and I wanted them to all attend,” says Forrest, sharing that Powell passed away in 2023. “Before I even knew I was going to go into the higher education field, I remember telling her, ‘I want your job.’ She replied, ‘Then come and get it.’ She saw something in me. We stayed connected and she continued to check in with me and followed my career long after graduation.”
Forrest says nearly everyone has a story from their time in college about something or someone who made a difference. “Universities and students need alumni. Their career paths show students what could be in a way that only they can show to inspire our students,” he says. “I’m here to make these connections at UM-Dearborn. This is the work that excites me.”
If you have ideas for Office of Alumni Engagement efforts or want to share how alums have worked with you at UM-Dearborn, reach out to Forrest.
Story by Sarah Tuxbury
