UC San Diego Retirement Association Report
April 2024 Report
Submitted by Nancy Wilson, UCSDRA President and Representative to CUCRA
The UC San Diego Retirement Association continues its active roles, both as a stand‐alone organization and in close partnership with the UC San Diego Emeriti Association. The two organizations share facilities in the UCSD Retirement Resource Center under the direction of Vania Bailon. Events take place in both virtual and in-person formats.
Membership of the UC San Diego Retirement Association remains by far the largest in the UC system, with some 2500 members. Dues for single annual and single life memberships remain at $30 and $300, respectively. Dues for couple annual and couple life memberships remain at $40 and $400, respectively.
The Retirement Association Gazette, the organization’s newsletter, is published nine times each year and is a 12‐ page, online, full‐color newsletter format, with the Fall issue including a six‐page section of year‐long programs. The Gazette contents include details about upcoming activities, requests for volunteers, a President’s Message, and a calendar of events. The RA also publishes a weekly events calendar email “Next Week/+ at the UCSD Retirement Association”, listing events for the coming two weeks. Members are required to RSVP online to receive follow-up event information.
The Retirement Association offers three list‐serv choices; one for all campus flyers plus RA and benefits news, one for UCSD‐RA and benefits news, and the third limited to the electronic distribution of the Gazette and Next Week.
The UC San Diego RA has a large group of active volunteers who typically contribute more than 1,000 hours each year. This year, the RA offers a variety of volunteer events: CSP Networking nights, mentoring opportunities, a Holiday Food Drive, a Marine Holiday Toy Drive, Food Bank events, and knitting of NICU Preemie caps to name a few. The volunteer Board and Committee members provide approximately 2,000 hours of volunteer service time to various meetings throughout the year. Total RA volunteer hours exceed 5,000 each year.
The Membership Committee plans to hold a virtual Meet the Board event in May for recruitment purposes.
The Program Committee organizes numerous activities annually, both virtual and in-person, including community tours (ethnic markets and other noteworthy San Diego attractions), educational seminars (aging and financial topics, distinguished lecture series, healthy living and eating lectures and food demos. In addition, there are several annual events that members look forward to which are all now being reimagined in the virtual world). Program offerings range from 15 to 20 each month! An online RSVP system generates a confirmation email to each registrant, and a roster of event attendees for check in and for sending the Zoom link. The RA has planned more than 200 new programs and activities for the year ahead. Neighborhood Exploration walks and fitness walks give members the opportunity to walk and socialize.
Most all RA programs are recorded and shared on the very active Retiree & Emeriti YouTube Channel. Access to these informative and/or entertaining videos is open to the public. The RA already has more than 250 videos on its channel, with viewership surpassing 44,000. According to your interests, you may find it more productive to explore the REYT via its many playlists. With RAYT playlists, video recordings are grouped by area of interest or specialty. The REYT currently has fifteen active playlists.
The amount that the UCSD Retirement Association contributes to the Chancellor’s Scholarship fund is $7500 annually and it makes a $1,000 award to Nursing / Health Sciences, and an additional $1200 sponsorship to the UCSD International Center to support study‐abroad scholarships. The recipients of these funds attend in-person luncheons to accept the awards.
Several UCSD Retirement Association members are actively involved as mentors with the Emeriti Mentor Program. This program provides mentoring to some 80 freshmen and sophomore Chancellor’s Scholars, and 80 upper division scholars. Mentoring is continuing via Zoom and in-person.
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