More than 50 alumni, students and faculty members gathered Friday for the Accounting and Information Systems Alumni chapter’s annual dinner in the Orange Grove Bistro dining room.

Alumni, students and professors clad in suits and collared shirts, began arriving at 6:30 p.m., most of them standing in the dining room – a sparsely decorated space dedicated to banquets and large dinner parties – chatting with each other, their voices becoming louder and more singular as more people arrived.

One woman, the youngest attendee at the dinner, sat alone at one point before the dinner.

“I’m working on a project that’s called Women and Business Connect,” Adilene Delgado, a graduating senior majoring in accounting said when asked about her reasons for attending the dinner. “What I’m planning on doing is bringing together (women) students and alumni to share their experiences.”

The president of the AIS Alumni chapter, Susan Barney said the purpose of the event was to reconnect alumni with the community.

Attendees began to eat and converse when Keji Chen, a professor of accounting at CSUN found his way to the table and spoke about the different bonding experiences he’s had from school to school.

“I spent a few years studying at the University of Alabama and three years in the University of Washington, having been to different institutions, the alumni, the relationship between alumni, the department and the current students, it’s one of the best,” Chen said about CSUN.

Alumni were the least distinct group – some of them being old enough to be professors and some young enough to be graduate students. One such man was David Burger, a retired fraud examiner – CSUN class of 1983 – compared events like the dinner, where networking is a priority and an importance, to events that he attended before he began his career.

“I think it’s vital whenever the outside corporate or government world would come in and there’d be a speaking engagement,” Burger said. “It opened up to the students avenues for fields or careers they could go into.”

Barney was asked how she thought the night went.

“I think this is one of our most successful events,” Barney said.