During the business portion of our May 21 meeting, members in attendance will elect UMRA’s leadership for 2019–20. The Nominating Committee presents the following candidates for approval.

President
Bill Donohue (will automatically move from president-elect to president) retired from the U of M in 2016 after serving for 33 years in the Office of General Counsel as a litigator, director of litigation, deputy general counsel, and finally general counsel. He provided legal advice on matters affecting all aspects of the University, and supervised and hired personnel to meet increasing legal needs. Before coming to the University, he served in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for several years.

President-elect
Frank Cerra joined the University of Minnesota in 1981 as a trauma critical care surgeon. His medical career includes education with a large research program. He has more than 350 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of basic research in liver cell metabolism, translational research in the nutritional/metabolic support of the critically ill and injured, and in interprofessional education. He entered academic administration as department head in surgery, was then dean of the Medical School, and spent 15 years as the senior vice president for health sciences and services at the University. He stepped out of that job in 2011 and worked part time as the senior advisor to the National Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice. He now serves on governing boards and does consulting work.

Secretary
Lynn Anderson (continuing) was director of curriculum integration and associate director of the Learning Abroad Center for eight years, and a senior advisor in the College of Liberal Arts for 19 years. She taught German, English as a second language, and foreign studies at the U of M, and was the Student Project for Amity Among Nations faculty advisor for students doing research in Germany. Before retiring, she served six years as dean of International Education and director of the International Center at UC San Diego. Lynn has served on the UMRA board and as secretary since 2018.

Treasurer
Carl Adams (continuing) has served on the UMRA board since 2014 and as treasurer since 2015. He retired in 2013 from the faculty of Information and Decision Sciences in the Carlson School of Management. He served as department chair for 18 years; special assistant for planning for Law School Dean Bob Stein and subsequently University President Nils Hasselmo; and director of management information systems research in CSOM for six years. He also served on the Faculty Senate in many capacities for more than 40 years.

Board members continuing for second, three-year terms
Will Craig retired in 2014 from the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) after 54 years at the University, counting student days. As a CURA administrator, he focused on Minnesota public policy issues: environmental, economic, and educational. He was an early pioneer in the field of geographic information systems, is a member of the GIS Hall of Fame, and was the lead author of the GIS Certification Institute's Code of Ethics. On the U of M campus, he was active in the Council of Academic Professionals and Administrators and led the effort to transform it to the P&A Senate.

Cherie Y. Hamilton graduated from the U of M with degrees in anthropology and business and was first employed by General Mills as an interpreter. Later, she became manager of recruitment and was responsible for recruiting MBAs and engineers. In the 1980s she served as the director of recruitment and staffing for Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Since returning to Minnesota in 2005, she has been involved in the U of M Women’s Club, where she served as president for two terms. She joined UMRA in 2009 and became a member of the board in 2016. She also serves on the boards of the Association of Retiree Organizations in Higher Education and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), and teaches courses on Brazil and Portugal and leads tours to those countries for OLLI.

New board members
Eric Hockert (nominated for a three-year term) retired in 2016 from the Office for Technology Commercialization after serving eight years helping faculty and companies transfer patented technologies from the University to industry for product development. These included well-known as well as startup companies. His 40-year career included 3M and Boston Scientific along with a few years as a liaison between faculty and industry in IPrime—a university-industry partnership in the College of Science and Engineering. He has a current lead role in the University Retirees Volunteer Center, and is focused on increasing retirees’ engagement with the University through volunteer activities as well as identifying and assisting other support we can provide to the University and its various units and departments.

Ron Matross (nominated for a three-year term) was an analyst of student data for 35 years in the Office of Undergraduate Education. He led the development of the University’s first retention reporting system, its first comprehensive graduate survey, and the freshmen admissions tracking system used by the Office of Admissions. He was responsible for much of the University’s enrollment management analysis, including enrollment modeling, applicant surveys, and program evaluation. As a graduate of the University’s Counseling Psychology program, he is interested in returning to his roots by helping UMRA enhance the well-being of its members. He chairs the UMRA Cares Committee and Workshop Subcommittee.

Jan Morlock (nominated to fill the remaining two years of Frank Cerra’s term) served until her retirement in 2017 as the director of community relations for the Twin Cities Campus in the Office of the President, where she coordinated the University’s engagement in local and regional government and planning initiatives. Earlier, she worked in nonprofit and neighborhood-based community development and was a Yale University community renaissance fellow. Her interests in retirement include citizen and community response to climate change. She and her spouse are becoming “butterfly ranchers,” converting land on their former dairy farm to pollinator habitat. Jan has served as a University of Minnesota Extension master gardener since 2002. She joined UMRA in 2017 to stay connected to the always-fascinating University community, and would like to serve on the board to support UMRA’s mission to creatively connect retirees with each other and with the U of M community.

Other continuing board members include Vernon Cardwell, Cathy Lee Gierke, Jeanne Markell, Claudia Parliament, Richard Poppele, Kaimai Terry, Gloria Williams, and Jerry Rinehart (immediate past president). 

 —Kristine Mortensen, editor