The love and enthusiasm Greg Grauman, SOC/BA ’99, has for AU is palpable – so it’s no surprise that he has made a career of rallying others to become Eagles too. Grauman, acting director of AU’s Office of Admissions, remarks, “my relationship with AU has only strengthened.”

It is the work he does now that first helped him discover AU as a high school student. “I’m pleased to share that I found AU precisely because of recruitment outreach,” he says. He recalls his very first college fair, noting that “first in the row of tables was AU. I took the brochure home that night, and knew after reading it cover to cover that I had found my dream college.”

Grauman left D.C. to attend graduate school at Notre Dame. After meeting and marrying his wife, the couple moved to her hometown of Perth, Western Australia where Grauman taught Australian politics to high school students. As his career in education advanced, he became an international student advisor at Edith Cowan University, and after a 1 a.m. webcam interview, Grauman found himself returning to AU as a member of its admissions program. These travels, in addition to time spent working for the American University of Rome, have left a deep impression on him and reverberate in the day-to-day of his work back at AU. “This diversity of experience has actually served to reinforce just how similar students are around the world, regardless of their dominant culture or language.”

Happy to be back on campus, the proud alumnus is also channeling his zeal for his alma mater as a cochair for his 10-year reunion. “My classmates should return to AU to see just how much the campus has physically transformed in the past 10 years,” he says. “It looks great, and is sure to evoke the question ‘Why couldn’t that change have been made when I was a student?’”

As Grauman prepares to celebrate his 10-year reunion, he considers the changes and the progress AU has made over the past decade. “As alumni,” he says, “We have a lot about which to be proud.”