Mission Statement
To advocate for, educate, and serve retired faculty and staff in higher education, bringing together the talent, knowledge, and experience to improve their quality of life and that of the community and institutions through creating new models of retirement.
About AROHE
The concept of an annual conference for on-campus retirement organizations emerged after a 1984 survey of public and private universities was conducted by the University of Southern California Emeriti Center. Only a quarter of the over 100 respondents indicated that their campus had any formal group or center focusing on retired persons or their interests. James Peterson, Arnold Small, and Harriet Servis coordinated the first Conference on Retirement in California Colleges and Universities in May 1985 at USC with ten institutions represented.
The newly-named "West Coast Conference on Retirement in Colleges and Universities" continued annually at USC from 1986 to 1988 and became an international effort at the fifth conference in 1989 at the University of Washington, where twenty-two institutions from the U.S. and Canada were represented. Efforts to expand the conference beyond the West Coast stalled when the 1990 conference, to be held at Purdue University, was canceled due to low registration. However, a group of prior participants revived the effort eight years later, resulting in the 1998 conference held aboard the Royal Caribbean Legend of the Seas.
At the end of a conference held by North Carolina State University in 2000, a group of participants re-evaluated the program and decided to establish a formal, multi-campus association that would be dedicated to providing a forum for the discussion of all aspects of retirement in higher education. AROHE was launched with Dr. Paul Hadley of the University of Southern California as its organizing president. In 2002, AROHE held its inaugural conference in Bloomington, Indiana (Indiana University). It was at this conference that the name Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education was officially proposed and accepted. Later that year, AROHE was officially incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
AROHE held subsequent conferences in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2004 (Vanderbilt University); and Tempe, Arizona, in 2006 (Arizona State University). In addition to publishing a newsletter and online resources, AROHE continues to host biennial conferences. Two significant recent accomplishments have been the development of a "Start-up Kit" to assist other institutions of higher education in forming retirement organizations. The second accomplishment is conducting a "Survey of College and University Retiree Organizations" to help members and others learn about what educational institutions are doing to support, serve, advocate for, engage, utilize, and honor their retired faculty and staff.
We believe with confidence that there is an important role for AROHE and that our programs of support for faculty and staff retirees will benefit from international communication. We believe, moreover, that our roles in support of our respective universities will be strengthened as a result of this organization.
We hope you will join other well-known universities and consider membership in AROHE.