Chris Marshall, associate vice president for alumni affairs, sometimes compares the Office of Alumni Affairs to a plane that's ready to take off, now that three new senior directors have been hired to further alumni engagement.

"It feels like we've been at the gate, revving the engine, then taxiing. Now we're about to take off and do some amazing things," said Marshall.

Most notable is the creation of a new position -- senior director of social media -- that is one of only two of its kind in the country. (The other is at Stanford.) Andrew Gossen, who joined Cornell in January, has spent the past eight years at Princeton pioneering new approaches to alumni education, volunteer leadership training and reunion programming. With a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard, he is known in the industry for developing an iPhone application for Princeton's reunion, Marshall said. "The fact that we got him here is a coup. He's a wonder-kid."

At Cornell, Gossen has been writing a strategic plan for social media and mobile technology related to alumni. The Division of Alumni Affairs and Development will use these tools in its communications, marketing, volunteer management, alumni outreach, engagement measurement and analysis, prospect cultivation and donor stewardship.

Joining Gossen is Tim Mahar, senior director of affinity programs, who also began in January. Laura Denbow, senior director of volunteer programs, began work in July.

"All three come with exciting things they bring to the equation: backgrounds, experiences and new programs that we're going to start," Marshall said.

Mahar has been at Syracuse University since 1999, most recently as executive director for the Office of Regional Advancement. A former improvisational comedian, Mahar has a strong presence and a talent for public speaking, Marshall said. "He's become very quickly a go-to guy for me," he said.

Mahar oversees regional programs and is developing a new undergraduate affinities program, which attracts alumni through the groups they cared about as students, from Greek organizations and athletics to musical groups. He also manages the minority and legacy admissions programs.

Denbow comes to Cornell with 15 years of experience at University of Virginia, Georgetown University and Bucknell University. Most recently she oversaw the merger of Bucknell's alumni relations and career services programs. At Cornell, she'll centralize the volunteer management that currently happens in many different formats around the university. That includes identifying potential alumni volunteers, matching them with volunteer opportunities and defining a volunteer "career path," so the best volunteers can stay engaged in ways that are both satisfying for them and beneficial for the university. She'll also oversee the Office of the Councils and the President's Council of Cornell Women.

"Now that we have the resources and some people with experience to lead us, we can just let this thing take off and go," Marshall said. "By the fall, we'll be in that plane, up in the air, and headed in the right the direction."