The Student Alumni Associates is the student arm of the National Alumni Association—a student organization sponsored by the Office of Alumni Affairs and open to sophomore, junior, and senior students. The purpose of the organization is to stimulate students’ interest in UT and to foster alumni participation after graduation. The SAAs are official hosts for the university president, greeting visitors in Neyland Stadium skyboxes on game days and working major campus events. The Student Alumni Associates are responsible for the Big Orange Wrap on football Saturdays, as well as for other projects that promote spirit and tradition at the university.
The Undergraduate Alumni Council began in 1971 with 20 students. It had its roots, perhaps, in the UT Today program organized in 1968, in which students were taken to alumni meetings to give updates on current campus issues. But the new organization existed to acquaint students with alumni affairs, and it established a senior referral service and a volunteer summer employment program. (The summer employment program helped more than one thousand undergraduates find summer work in its first year of operation.) Its name was subsequently changed to Student Alumni Associates to avoid confusion with the Student Government Association’s Undergraduate Academic Council.