Past "From the President" articles
From the President
2024-10: Opportunities to connect, serve, and learn
In September I had the pleasure of reading the annual reports from UMRA’s many officers, committee chairs, and liaisons and representatives to University activities. Reading reports may sound dry, but they bring alive the ways UMRA members have found to connect with each other. We’ve started having special interest groups make short presentations at our luncheon forums so you can learn more about them, and most are open to visitors if you want to see if a group is a good fit. As always, check the UMRA website and newsletters for ideas on where you might connect.
An important way to serve UMRA and meet new people is to serve as a liaison. For example—especially for those of you who are also University grads—we currently need someone to serve as our liaison to the U of M Alumni Association. This mostly email role includes recommending video recordings of UMRA workshops and other programs for posting on the Alumni Association’s Gold Mind YouTube site. You might also coordinate ticket arrangements for a small group of UMRA members to attend the spring U of M Day at Target Field organized by the Alumni Association, so a bit of interest in baseball helps. Try it for a year! Contact me or Will Craig, our current liaison, for more information.
New Friends of the Libraries partnership
Many of you are not pleased to be losing University Libraries borrowing privileges as part of the termination of retiree UMN email and Google Workspace accounts effective December 7. We have good news! The Friends of the University Libraries will be offering UMRA members a 50 percent discount on membership, which brings with it borrowing privileges. Details are being worked out and are expected to require showing your UMRA member card along with your Friends library card. This is a new benefit we pursued. Thank you to the Friends for our new partnership!
Our October 15 Living Well Workshop, as usual, will feature a presentation by the UMN Office of Human Resources (OHR) focused on retiree health insurance options for the coming year. I encourage all of you to participate. Federal law changes providing better prescription drug coverage are affecting the plans for 2025. Our workshop via Zoom will be an opportunity to learn about that. We’ll also learn about the University retiree medical plan change for 2026 that’s in the works. This change involves creating an “exchange model”—instead of the four vendors we are used to seeing—for shopping for and enrolling in health insurance. OHR expects the exchange model will provide more choices with lower premiums, plus advisors to guide retirees to the best individual choices. You can sign up to receive updates by email from OHR.
On October 16, I hope to see many of you in person at our Luncheon Forum when our guest speaker will be the new UMN President Rebecca Cunningham. Every forum and workshop I have attended since joining UMRA has been intriguing and taught me something new, regardless of the topic. Come join us, connect, and learn!
—Julie Sweitzer, UMRA president