| | President's Notes |  Greetings AROHE Members,
We are less than seven months from our Biennial Conference in Atlanta (Oct 7-9; arohe2018.org), and what a doozy this one will be (only folks our age know what a “doozy” is). The planning committee has put together another terrific program. They also have assembled tasty and educational ancillary activities sure to please both you and any guests who will visit Atlanta with you. With our speakers (Steve Tipton and Roger Baldwin), workshops, panels and resource fair, your head will have a positive spin with new ideas and activities. We look forward to welcoming new attendees and seeing those who have attended previous conferences; there is plenty to share.
The Request for Proposals is out for the Conference (see article in this newsletter) for those who would like to present at either the concurrent session workshops or the resource fair. We have found that these ideas translate into new activities all across the AROHE landscape. Nominations for the inaugural Innovation Awards can still be submitted. The three awardees will be informed by late April so that travel arrangements to Atlanta can be completed (one person from each of the three will have complimentary registration to the Biennial Conference).
| All American retirees’ eyes are again on Washington, D.C., and a Congress that continues to experiment on itself and on the populations of retirees who depend on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. All are untouched in the recent funding bill passed by Congress, but all are fair game in the budget proposal released by the White House in mid-February. “Eternal vigilance…” and AROHE as well as other organizations with retirees’ interests are paying very close attention (and writing notes, as we hope you are too). Older adults are not the only potentially vulnerable populations targeted, but American elders vote in a large percentage. May that continue to be the case.
Your AROHE Board has been busy spreading the word about the value of higher education retirees, and some new networks are being formed for your benefit with ENCORE and Aging 2.0. You may be hearing locally about the regional Aging 2.0 chapters with interest in engaging your organization’s membership (should they desire) in product testing and focus groups. Aging 2.0 is an organization of companies and organizations dedicating to improving the lives of elders; that includes product development and sales. They are interested in hearing from USERS (that’s us) as well as from much younger designers about needs and efficacy of various products. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, enjoy the coming thaw that leads into spring!
Best, 
Caroline M. Kane AROHE President | AROHE 2018 Conference: Request for Proposals due May 14
| | Ninth Biennial AROHE Conference
"Re-Creating Retirement: Connect, Serve, Celebrate!"
Host: Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC) Co-Host: Georgia Association of Higher Education Retiree Organizations (GA-HERO) We invite attendees in many categories to join us in Atlanta as we discuss the many ways Retirement Organizations (ROs) provide a gateway to a future of collegial relationships, intellectual engagement, and productive endeavor which benefit both academic retirees and their colleges and universities.
We know you will enjoy the opportunity to network with leaders of ROs – and of AROHE itself – along with administrators in higher education, researchers who study retirement, innovators in retirement and aging, and sponsors who offer support to retirees. And we hope all attendees will consider sharing their relevant expertise as broadly as possible by presenting at a Concurrent Session and/or exhibiting at the Resource Exchange Fair. We are seeking proposals for presentations and exhibits in three overarching categories that reflect our primary conference themes: -
Opportunities to Connect. What Retirement Organizations do for their members. -
Opportunities to Serve. What Retirement Organizations and their members do for their institutions and those in the wider community. -
Re-Creating Retirement. What AROHE and regional consortiums do to help retirees Connect, Serve, and Celebrate. More specific subject areas in which proposals will be welcome are described on the conference website: arohe2018.org/request-for-proposals. The form for electronic submission of proposals is available there. Submissions are due by May 14, 2018.
| | AROHE 2018 Conference: Signature Event - "Only in Atlanta" | On Sunday, October 7, a bus will collect AROHE attendees who have signed up for this special event at 11:00 AM at the Emory Conference Center Hotel. We shall drive through the Emory campus and beautiful Druid Hills to fabled Ponce de Leon Avenue and on to Mary Mac’s Tea Room, which has set the standard for Southern cooking in Atlanta for 70 years – where we’ll have an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch of homegrown specialties: fried chicken, hoppin’ john, corn muffins, peach cobbler, and more.
After lunch we’ll re-board the bus and head down Peachtree Street to the center of the city and its iconic sights before heading east on “Sweet Auburn” to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, where there will be time to explore the museum at Freedom Hall, the tomb of MLK and Coretta Scott King, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and MLK’s birth home.
From there we’ll head to the Carter Center, where Dr. Steve Hochman, Director of Research and Assistant to President Carter, will give us an introduction to the Carter Museum, which there will be time to explore.
Commentary will be provided by your Atlanta guides on everything we’ll see on the tour, and the bus will return to the hotel by 4:00 p.m., in plenty of time to get ready for the evening’s reception and banquet.
Registration and payment for this event must be made in advance online when you register online for the Conference here: Registration Link.
Monday, October 8, Spouse/Partner Outing to the Atlanta History Center Free private transportation, to and from, via van by members of the Emory Emeritus College will be available to those who wish to spend the day at the History Center seeing its exhibitions on the history of Atlanta, the Civil War, famous golfer Bobby Jones, or the 1996 Olympics; touring the extensive native gardens; visiting the Swan House mansion or the 19th-century Tullie Smith Farmhouse; having lunch in the charming onsite restaurant, Souper Jenny’s. The newly restored Cyclorama will probably also be available to see while you are there. You will be responsible for the cost of your own tickets (Senior Citizen $18) and your lunch (average $10). This ticket will also include admission to the midtown Margaret Mitchell House and Museum if visited within nine days. You may sign up for this trip at registration in the hotel on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018. Tuesday, October 9, Spouse/Partner Tour of the David J. Sencer Museum of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (“the CDC”) Louise Shaw, Curator of the Museum has agreed to lead a private tour on this day at 10:00 AM for no more than 20 people. If you wish to join the tour, you will need to sign up in advance online, as the CDC requires a written list of the names of those attending a week in advance. You will need to have photo ID with you and be aware that stringent security protocols will be followed. Specific registration details will follow at a later date. | | AROHE Innovation Award Deadline Extended to March 30, 2018 | | The inaugural AROHE Innovation Awards application/nomination deadline has been extended through March 30, 2018, with awards to be announced at the end of April. Share what your organization has created and implemented that enhances retirement for those in higher education. Win a complimentary registration to the Biennial AROHE Conference in Atlanta in October 2018. Have your innovation spotlighted by AROHE at the meeting and in the press. How to nominate/apply? Go to this link: arohe.org/AROHE-Innovation-Award. | | | "When I'm 64": An Emeriti Initiative at Mount Holyoke College |  Mount Holyoke College (“MHC”, mtholyoke.edu), located in South Hadley, Massachusetts, is a highly selective, residential, liberal arts women’s college. While the community had long acknowledged that the retired faculty was one of its greatest assets, in 2015, a new dean of faculty sought to better understand and support their needs. In conversation with near-to-retired faculty, she set a goal to solicit feedback about the types of support and programming that might be of most help to faculty during their emeriti years. Read more about how retired faculty members and the dean of faculty staff worked together to create an emeriti faculty initiative that provides essential information, resources, privileges, and opportunities designed for this stage of the academic career (MHC Essay). | | Preserving Faculty Legacies - Leveraging New Tools - Creating New Partnerships | | By: Emily Chan(SJSU), Amy Strage (SJSU), Diane Jonte-Pace (SCU), and Nadia Nasr (SCU) It is an oft-quoted statistic that although nearly half of the nation’s higher education faculty are eligible to retire, many opt to continue working well beyond the typical retirement age. Faculty cite a number of reasons for the reluctance to retire - they continue to derive satisfaction from their work, they have difficulty imagining letting go of their faculty identity, there is still so much unfinished business they wish to address, and they are hesitant to retire without leaving some kind of lasting legacy related to their life’s work. Recently, with efforts such as the American Council on Education/Sloan Foundation’s “Transition to Retirement” initiative, many campuses have stepped up efforts to help faculty prepare to move into retirement by focusing on faculty legacy. Expanding on existing programs designed for late-career faculty, for example, San Jose State University and Santa Clara University invite faculty to work with library staff to curate and archive print and non-print materials representing their pedagogical or scholarly legacies. At both institutions these artifacts are then preserved as an organized record of faculty contributions. At SJSU, these efforts leverage a digital platform available to all faculty as an open access repository for their professional works. At Santa Clara University, these efforts also serve to chronicle the university’s history as a Jesuit institution.
We invite you to read more about Santa Clara’s “Donating Faculty Papers” initiative at Donating Faculty Papers.pdf and to visit samples of the SJSU Scholarworks profiles initiative at scholarworks.sjsu.edu.
Please contact us for further information about the projects, the partnerships, or the platforms. (Emily Chan: Emily.chan@sjsu.edu; Amy Strage: amy.strage@sjsu.edu; Diane Jonte-Pace: djontepace@scu.edu; and Nadia Nasr: nnasr@scu.edu.)
| | New Brief Available About Legacy Projects | | Would you like to know more about legacy projects such as the one described in the San Jose State University and Santa Clara University article? If so a new brief on “Legacy Projects” for AROHE members has just been added to the AROHE Brief Series. The new Brief gives an overview of the purpose for such projects, provides insight into four categories of legacy projects, and offers links to examples of institutional projects within each category. Legacy projects take many forms. Some projects are concerned with preserving institutional memory by taping interviews with retired faculty or staff, creating biographies or personal profiles, or archiving obituaries. Other legacy projects focus on honoring a record of achievement at a ceremony or reception, or celebrating a collection of the retiree’s work. Still other legacy projects support ongoing professional development or completion of a capstone project. The AROHE Briefs Series is a collection of two to three-page documents that focus on programs and practices that support retiree organizations as well as individual faculty and staff retirees. Other Briefs in the series include Retiree Associations, Retiree Centers, the Emeritus College and Staff Transitions to Retirement. All the Briefs are available to AROHE members and can be located on the AROHE website at https://www.arohe.org/AROHE-Briefs. | | AROHE Newsletter and Communications Survey | | The AROHE Communications Committee is conducting an online survey about our newsletter, AROHE Matters, and electronic methods of communication. We want your feedback and suggestions to improve our communications. Questions are asked about your experience with the current newsletter, content preferences and interest in electronic forms of communication. All recipients of the AROHE Matters newsletter will receive an email from AROHE asking them to click on a link and complete a brief survey. Based on trial runs, the survey takes between 10 to 15 minutes to complete. The survey will be available until Friday, April 6 at 5:00 p.m (Eastern time). The survey may be completed by anyone who receives the AROHE Matters newsletter and by multiple persons at an institution or organization. Participation in the survey is voluntary and responses are anonymous. The results of the Newsletter and Communications Survey will be reported in a future edition of the AROHE Matters newsletter. If you have questions about the survey or have difficulty accessing or completing the survey please contact AROHEby phone (213) 740-5037 or by email info@arohe.org. Thank you in advance, Members of the AROHE Communications Committee Click to return to the table of contents.
| | Northern California Retirement Organization Consortium (NorCal ROC) | | The 2018 annual meeting (January 30th) was sponsored by AROHE as well as the UC Berkeley Retirement Center. Six different colleges were represented (a total of 10 retirement organizations). Institutions included Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, Cosumnes River College, University of California, Davis and University of California, Berkeley (with five different ROs represented). Each year’s meeting is a regional effort to help each other’s institutions and retirees. AROHE President Caroline Kane and UC Berkeley Retirement Center Director Cary Sweeney welcomed attendees and President Kane gave an update on AROHE’s activities since the last meeting in the fall of 2016. Specific topics for discussion included: Data: A survey of retired staff organized by the Council of UC Retirement Associations (CUCRA) across the University of California system (10 campuses) was discussed. The survey queried the activities of retired and non-senate academics over the last three years. Among notable results was that 63% of survey respondents were active volunteers either in their communities or through their ROs vs. in the United States, where only about 25% of retirees between the ages of 65 and 80 volunteer. Full survey results can be found on the CUCRA website at cucra.ucsd.edu (UC Retirees: Advocates, Ambassadors, Assets). Useful Programs: Legacy projects were center stage. Santa Clara University and San Jose State University presented their project which is discussed elsewhere in this newsletter. Cosumnes River College has an Oral History Project that puts video interviews of retirees on the College website in a partnership between its Emeriti Association and the College Administration via a Memorandum of Understanding. UC Davis also has a strong legacy project and UC Berkeley’s Emeriti Association is starting one. Publicizing: How do we let our campuses know what we do? The focus was on highlighting the value of retired faculty and staff. The messaging media clearly is audience age dependent with social media vs YouTube vs email with all being viable options.
Click to return to the table of contents. | | Department Emeriti Representatives | | In the fall of 2016, the University of California, Berkeley, started a program to hasten the transformation of retirement for faculty. Department Chairs were invited to appoint an emeritus or emerita to represent their department on a panel of representatives. The UC Berkeley Emeriti Association and the Associate Vice Provost for the Faculty along with the UC Berkeley Retirement Center joined in this effort. The goal is to provide more effective communication channels between emeriti, the campus administration and their own department administration. The Representatives meet once a semester to share input and glean information to take back to their departments. Thirty-five departments have appointed representatives, who have attended lively meetings discussing eye-opening issues. The Associate Vice Provost has indicated that these meetings have influenced efforts in her office to make more information available to both emeriti and faculty considering retirement. The input from the Representatives has also allowed the Associate Vice Provost to reach out to departments for improving the environment for their emeriti. Department Representatives bring input from their academic communities to all the other departments about retirees’ concerns. Another advantage of this program is that each department now knows the privileges that emeriti retain and should be accorded after their retirement. Faculty considering retirement also reap the benefit of having a knowledgeable retired colleague to consult for information and further resources. To earn more, go to retirement.berkeley.edu/ucbea.   
| | Resources and Trends | | Age-Friendly University Initiative An international effort to highlight the role higher education can play in responding to the challenges and opportunities of associated with an aging population. Ten principles provide a valuable guiding framework for distinguishing and evaluating age-friendly programs and policies, as well as identifying institutional gaps and opportunities for growth. Endorsed by the Gerontological Society of America’s education unit, the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. For more information go to https://www.dcu.ie/agefriendly/index.shtml. Cato Maior De Senectute - How to Growth Old, Ancient Wisdom by Cicero in 44 BCE Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all—and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was. Valuable lessons are set forth in Cicero’s little book. They include: a good life begins in youth, older people have much to teach the young, old age need not deny us an active life but we need to accept limitations, the mind is a muscle that must be exercised, and death is not to be feared. Go to https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10676.html.
The Academy is Aging in Place Assessing Alternatives for Modifying Institutions of Higher Education Brian Kaske, PhD, addresses institutions of higher education and their employment of a greater proportion of persons over 65 relative to the general labor force. Should institutions modify policies and programs that provide more opportunities for aging faculty to remain healthy and productive, or should efforts focus on facilitating retirement? The article presents what is known about the aging academic workforce and describes current institutional responses. Gerontologist, 2017, Vol. 57, No. 5, 816-823. The Health and Retirement Study: Aging in the 21st Century - Challenges and Opportunities for Americans The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was designed more than a quarter century ago to provide data for research on aging as an individual experience as well as a population phenomenon. The study’s combination of longitudinal data on health, retirement, disability, resources, and family support offers unprecedented opportunities to analyze and gain insight into our aging selves. Elucidating the complex interplay of health and retirement, of biology and individual choice, is at the heart of HRS objectives. Broad multidisciplinary measurement is essential to that mission. Because life changes, and we with it, a study of aging needs to be able to track change by longitudinal measurement. Read the study online:
http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/sitedocs/databook/inc/pdf/HRS-Aging-in-the-21St-Century.pdf.
Click to return to the table of contents. | | Come Join Us In Transforming Reitrement | | Since 2001 AROHE has supported both institutions and individuals by transforming the experience of retirement – the preparation, the actual transition, and post-retirement programming – into a smooth and productive life-course change. To renew, join or learn more visit arohe.org or contact AROHE by emailing info@arohe.org or calling (213) 740-5037.
| Tell Us Your Story | Share News, Activities, and Events of Your Retirement Organization Please send us a note about the activities, events, and news of your retirement organization for inclusion in AROHE Matters. Send your information to our newsletter editor at pcullinane@berkeley.edu by April 23rd for the May newsletter.
| About AROHE | AROHE's mantra is "Transforming Retirement." AROHE is a nonprofit association that champions transformative practices to support all stages of faculty and staff retirement, their mutually beneficial engagement, and continuing contributions to their academic institutions. By sharing research, innovative ideas, and successful practices, AROHE emphasizes the development and enhancement of campus-based retiree organizations and programs which support this continuing engagement in higher education. |
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