UC Santa Cruz Retirement Association Report
April 2021 Report
Submitted by Frank Trueba, UC Santa Cruz CUCRA Representative
The UCSC Retirees Association (RA) Board meets bimonthly and in conjunction with the Retiree and Emeriti Center focuses on providing social and educational programs for all UCSC retirees as well as fund-raising for scholarships on behalf of veteran & staff undergraduates. The RA Board publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Silver Slug Newsletter and maintains a website https://retirees.ucsc.edu/.
Due to the COVID pandemic we have had no in-person events since April, 2020. However, we continue to communicate with our members through on-line newsletters and direct e-mails. Although the "opening of California" has us tentatively thinking of returning to previously planned outdoor in-person events, such as nature walks, lagoon tours, pickle-ball, etc.
Scholarships:
The Retirees Association continues to sponsor two scholarships, the Bruce Lane Memorial Scholarship for UCSC students who are Military Veterans and the "Silver Slug Award" for current and retired staff and their dependents studying at UCSC who need financial assistance. For 2021 we are distributing scholarships of $1,000 each to ten Veteran students and dividing $4,500 among three Silver Slug recipients.
As with the 2020 event, the 2021 Scholarship Awards Luncheon will not be live but held virtually via Zoom (with the UCSC Chancellor speaking) and the recipients being profiled in our newsletter.
Programs/Events:
Again, just as in 2020, we currently have no in-person events scheduled but are scheduling two Zoom presentations by invited speakers.
Events Co-Sponsored with the Retiree & Emeriti Center (REC):
We repeated our "Bridge to Retirement" Zoom event, which allows imminent retirees to ask questions from existing retirees, in March to very positive response.
Our annual June "Welcome to Retirement" will again be via Zoom.
Other Notables:
We have used Zoom for our quarterly Association Board meetings for a year now and while we miss the live interaction, we have found that we can still conduct business rather well.
Our Zoom use included our annual Holiday Potluck event which was more of a social visit and, although considerably less tasty, allowed retirees from outside Santa Cruz County to attend.
Having suspended membership fees last year (due to the lack of events and concomitant need to pay for rentals and supplies), we are re-considering re-establish of the membership for the coming "fiscal" year (July 21-June22).
We continue to publish a quarterly e-newsletter.