January 2023 Minutes
UM President’s Council of Retired Employees
umaine.edu/retirees
January 13, 2023
8:15–9:40
Minutes
Foster Board Room, second floor Buchanan Alumni House and Zoom
Attendees: David Bagley, Louis Bassano, Richard Borgman, Richard Judd, Richard Kent, Sarah McPartland-Good, Thomas Sandford, Meredith Whitfield
Call to Order: Vice Chair Rick Borgman called the meeting to order at 8:15 a.m.
Minutes: There appear to be no minutes from last fall’s meetings. February 2022 minutes have not been approved. In the February 2023 meeting the committee will vote on approving the minutes from February 2022 and January 2023 (these minutes).
Membership: We have six members (not ex-officio) and six membership vacancies due to members leaving the committee at the end of 2022 (Dusty Dowse, Michael Pullen, Sue Randall, Phyllis Thibodeau) and two continuing vacancies from last year.
The openings are from: College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture; Classified (two); Professional; Gold Card Eligible Current Employee; Member at Large.
Prior to last spring, the prior chair was a member, but last spring that category was eliminated.
Rick proposed adding a retiree from the Honors College. There was some reluctance based on a small pool of candidates, but the proposal was approved by a vote of 5 approved with 1 abstention. The proposal now goes to the President for consideration.
The committee had a spirited discussion about the processes for obtaining new members.
Committee members are free to make suggestions, but such a suggestion is sent to the President for approval or not. Meredith has obtained a retiree list from HR which may be helpful. She will also reach out to appropriate people regarding retired classified and professional possibilities.
Candidates need not live close to campus (i.e. can attend meetings via zoom), but we do need new members to be aware of expectations regarding contributions.
Rick has a suggestion for a possible new member. He will talk with the potential candidate, and will share information (i.e., vita) with the committee. If the committee approves the name will be forwarded. In this case the candidate’s college dean will also be consulted.
Later in the meeting, Tom brought up Mazie Hough as a possible new member to consider. She has been involved with the Oral Histories. Tom will reach out to her.
Election of officers: After nominations, Tom Sandford was elected Chair, and Richard Judd was elected Secretary, each by a vote of five approve with 1 abstention.
Committees and Activities:
At this time we do not see the need to create committees for the Hikel Award and the Brown Scholarship.
The Brown Scholarship recipient is chosen by the Office of Financial Aid. There will be a short article about the recipient in the newsletter Silver Tracks.
Meredith will arrange for HR to send out the nomination information for the Hikel Award by month end. When there are nominations, we will form a subcommittee to consider the candidates. An article about last year’s awardee (Karen Boucias) will be in the spring edition of Silver Tracks. The year’s awardee will be introduced at the Retiree Homecoming in June.
We need to get working on the spring 2023 edition of Silver Tracks. Louis has volunteered to do an interview for the newsletter. Hopefully, the President will write a greeting, as well as the chair of PCRE.
Rick volunteered to coordinate the newsletter. Sarah’s team will help turn the writing into a formatted and beautiful newsletter. She would like the text by March 1.
Retiree Homecoming: The committee was in favor of organizing a live retiree homecoming in June. We would like to push back the date from its current June 6 to the middle of the month. That should allow a couple more of us to be there. Rick will look into that possibility. Several excellent ideas were suggested (tours of Habib Dagher’s 3-D Printed House, tour of the engineering building, Habib Dagher to give a talk). There will be a lunch with remarks, and so on.
At the moment there is no chair of the planning committee; the officers will take this on at least at the moment.
The committee discussed a retiree road trip. This hasn’t been done in a few years. It was suggested we work on that for early next fall because we have plenty to do this spring. However, it would be helpful to pick a day and event/location to put into the newsletter.
Future meetings: The committee agreed that future meetings should be on the first Friday of each month, at 8:15. The next meeting will be February 3, 2023 at 8:15 AM. It will be hybrid, and the zoom and boardroom will be open as of 8 AM.
Meeting adjourned at 9:40 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Rick Borgman