UC Davis Retirees' Association
October 2022 Report
Submited by: Emily Galindo, President
The UC Davis Retirees Association began the new year with a full executive board and established the following goals for 2022-2023:
1) Work with the UC Davis Retiree Center to update, consolidate and enhance our website.
2) Continue to develop our Speaker Series to regularly include relevant topics for staff retirees.
3) Consider ways to expand our board and to build our association membership.
Our annual new retirees' reception and resource fair was held in early October and was successful in adding new members while celebrating new retirees. In the future we hope to add an additional resource fair, perhaps in the spring, that will focus on providing information to all retirees.
UCDRA continues its biannual meetings with the Chancellor and the Provost. Association leadership also attends quarterly Campus Community Council meetings facilitated by the Chancellor. Association updates are provided at these meetings. The spring meeting with the Chancellor and the Provost included our support for establishing campus staffing of retirement facilitators to augment the work of the RASC in Oakland.
UC Davis retirees continue to receive free parking privileges. Following months of negotiation, a simplified method of registering two vehicles per retiree was agreed upon and now allows retirees easy access to campus and hospital parking lots without a physical permit or use of a mobile app.
Substantial time was spent on completing a manual for Executive Board members to help with their orientation to the work of the board and the association.
We experienced some staffing changes in our Retiree Center staff as the former director left during the summer. Juliane Crowley was recently named our new director and Larry Thao joined the staff in July. Recruitment for a new assistant director is currently underway.
A joint fundraising committee from the UCDRA and UCD Emeriti Association met throughout the past year and successfully raised more than $26,000 for the Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center on the Davis campus. Our focus was on raising funds for housing insecure students. The committee plans to continue their work this year.
Finally, we have continued to provide Brain Food Talks for our membership and will be adding several Speaker Series sessions this coming year. As the worse of the pandemic has passed, we have begun to return to campus for these gatherings as well as our monthly board meetings. However, we continue to see value in providing these sessions in a hybrid model of both in-person and Zoom to maximize the convenience of attendance for retirees who live close as well as those who live farther far away.