Class Notes features the personal and professional accomplishments of our fellow alumni. We honor and celebrate all the special milestones in your life such as advanced degrees, career promotions, weddings, birth announcements and more. We’d love to announce your news in an upcoming issue!
Class Notes must be submitted by your Class Secretary who will reach out to you prior to each issue of the magazine. If you have news to share and haven’t heard from your class secretary, send an email to [email protected], and we’ll make sure your class secretary receives your news. Before sharing your news, please refer to our Class Notes guidelines and FAQs below.
Wheaton magazine is published annually each fall. Class Notes are also collected for supplemental publications to be shared in the spring and summer. Due to space limitations, we ask that you only submit Class Notes about yourself or fellow alumni. We are unable to include detailed news about family members or others with no direct relationship to the college. Many of our story ideas originate from Class Notes submissions. If we choose to spotlight your story in our magazine, we’ll reach out for more information.
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
- Announce a marriage or birth after the fact only—we do not publish engagements
- Babies are cute, but unfortunately, we don’t have room to publish photos of them
- Be careful when sharing medical information or conditions
- Please do not send in baby photos or family photos with only one Wheaton alum
- Please avoid politics. This magazine is devoted to the Wheaton College community and not a space for political debate.
For additional information, please see FAQs for Class Secretaries and FAQs for Alumni below.
Update Your Information
All Alumni: We check every name mentioned in the Class Notes Submission Form against our database. If your name has changed since your graduation, we’ll only publish what’s in our system. To ensure your name, address and email are up-to-date, please send us your information to [email protected].
FAQs for Class Secretaries
The submission deadlines are:
- Spring Class Notes: January 17, 2025
- Summer Class Notes: April 17, 2025
- Fall 2025 Magazine: TBA
About a month before each deadline, you will receive a reminder email with instructions on submitting the notes. Many class secretaries send a mass email two or three weeks in advance of the deadlines to solicit news from their classmates. If a Class Notes column is not received by the deadline, we will email the secretary to confirm non-receipt for that issue.
Email [email protected] for assistance or to make other plans for submitting your column. In selected cases, we can extend the deadline, but generally, we can’t guarantee the publication of Class Notes that are received after the deadline.
A class list request entails two simple steps: Sign the confidentiality form (if you have not already) and fill out the class list request form. Both forms are online:
In general, avoid news of forthcoming events, such as a classmate’s impending wedding, parenthood or career change. It’s not a big deal to report a classmate’s future plans to spend a few weeks at the beach, but it could be embarrassing or hurtful if we’ve written about a major life event—like a wedding or the birth of a child—that doesn’t occur as planned. Please share news of these events after they have occurred.
Also, use discretion in reporting news that came to you from secondhand sources. (“Joe Smith heard that Wendy Wheaton will be moving to Florida in May.”) In such a case, you may want to contact the original source (or the alumni in question) to verify the news. Also, if you write about an illness, be sure to be sensitive to whether that person wants to share that information.
Please wait until after the baby is born or the marriage has occurred.
In most cases, you should not include this information. One exception is listing the contact information (including email addresses and phone numbers) for Reunion organizers or class officers. This information is already published on the Wheaton website and thus is permissible in Class Notes.
It’s trickier when classmates ask to have their email addresses published as part of their updated news. In the past, we have occasionally allowed this information in Class Notes (“Winona Wheaton writes that she would love to hear from her classmates. Her new e-mail address is….”). But because we want to limit the publication of alumni addresses for privacy reasons, it would be better to say, “Contact me for Winona’s address.”
Please report deaths to Alumni Relations at 508-286-8207 during business hours or by email at [email protected].
If a classmate reports a family member’s death as part of a general update for Class Notes, you may want to ask him/her to send an obituary to Alumni Relations Office. If the classmate has written of the death in a letter or email message to you, please forward the letter (or the email)—as well as the obituary, if you have one—to Alumni Relations.
It’s fitting to acknowledge the death in your class notes, even if it’s just to include a simple message of condolence to the classmate or the family.
After the death is reported in the Wheaton magazine, classmates may write to you to offer an anecdote or favorite memory about the person who died. You are welcome to incorporate these sentiments into your column as you see fit and as length allows.
The magazine editor revises the columns for length, clarity and readability. Grammatical or stylistic changes (e.g., changing MA to Mass., or 2nd grade to second grade) are done at the editor’s discretion and are required for uniformity in the publication. Typically, you will not be consulted about these revisions.
Yes! Please email your suggestions to [email protected].
And if classmates share updates about a relocation they’ve made, but haven’t listed their new addresses, kindly ask them to report their most recent contact information to the college. Please direct questions about this document to [email protected].
Yes! Please email your suggestions to [email protected].
And if classmates share updates about a relocation they’ve made, but haven’t listed their new addresses, kindly ask them to report their most recent contact information to the college. Please direct questions about this document to [email protected].
FAQs for Alumni
Class notes can be submitted to your class secretary any time you have current or “new” news to report.
Share:
- Your professional accomplishments, including a new job or promotion
- Your academic achievements, including a new degree or certification
- Your personal milestones, including marriages, births and deaths
Please limit your news to events that have happened in the past year, and note that the information you send may be edited due to space limitations.
Send updated news to the contact information listed in the Magazine for your class secretary or send an email to [email protected], and we’ll make sure your class secretary receives your news.
Try contacting your class secretary again or you can email the information to [email protected] and we will make sure your class secretary gets the news.
Digital photos: To submit a digital photo, attach it to an email message addressed to [email protected].
Click here for complete guidelines on taking and submitting digital photos.
For all photos: Please supply a brief description of the event and all the names and class years of the alumni who appear in the picture.
Please note: The photos you send to the Magazine must be sharp and clear. Photos that are out of focus, or that have harsh shadows, over-exposed areas, or “red-eyed” subjects, may not be usable. Often we receive more photos than we can use in any issue. When this happens, we will select photos that represent a variety of class years and timely events.
Deaths should be reported to Alumni Relations at 508-286-8207 during business hours or by email at [email protected].
If you have a personal remembrance or testimonial for a deceased classmate, you’re welcome to send those to the magazine or your class secretary. These sentiments will be incorporated into Class Notes as the class secretary sees fit and as space allows.
Report changes of address to Alumni Relations at 508-286-8207 or send an email to [email protected].
Yes. Please send your suggestions to [email protected].
If you wish to contact a former classmate, contact Alumni Relations at 508-286-8207 or [email protected] or search for classmates on our networking platform, LyonsLink.
Please direct questions about this document to [email protected].