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President's Message

Richard Madsen, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus

Dear Colleagues,

Last year President Barbara Parker and Past-President Peter Gourevitch gave extremely energetic and effective leadership to our organization.  I am grateful to them and honored to follow in their footsteps.

Last year we continued all of our signature activities, including the Chancellor’s Scholars and Emeriti Mentor Programs, led this past year by Wayne Kennedy, our Emeriti Faculty Lecture Series organized each year by the Vice President  (this past year by me, Richard Madsen, and next year by Tim Dresselhaus), the Emeriti Book Club led by Roger Spragg, and the quarterly publication of EA Chronicles edited by Steven Adler assisted by Suzan Cioffi.

At our end of the year luncheon in May,our speaker was Chancellor Khosla, who presented his vision of our university’s successes and challenges in the complex environment before us. We successfully recommended the Dickson Award to four emeriti colleagues continued their outstanding scholarship and teaching after retirement: Steven Adler, theatre, Mike Cole, communications, Shu Chien, bioengineering, and John Pierce, medicine.

The Retirement Resource Center (RRC) is the on campus partner for the Emeriti Association (faculty) and the Retirement Association (RA) (all retirees). In the fall of 2024, the RRC moved into a comfortable new space, with plenty of parking, in the old UCSD Extension buildings on Scholars Drive.  This was well managed by our energetic and skilled administrators, Vania Bailon and Jen Homrich. At the end of the year, however, Vania decided to move on from UCSD, and we are grateful to her for her care and dedication.  We are delighted to have hired an excellent replacement, Larissa Foggiano, who is bringing new creativity and skills to our organization.

The EA General meetings will continue via Zoom in September 2025 and the Book Club will meet in the RRC and will continue with hybrid format (Zoom and in-person) to maximize attendance. Many RA lectures and the International Film Series, an RA program much-loved by many EA members, will continue to be offered to EA members in different modalities, both Zoom and in-person.

In November, EA Executive Committee leadership met with Chancellor Khosla to present the Annual Report of the Chancellor’s Scholars and Emeriti Mentor Programs. The Chancellor is pleased with our success, and pledged some additional support, although in the face of budget constraints he was not able to support an expansion of the program to include other scholars for now.

I look forward to seeing many of you at our events and activities, either in person or online, to enjoy intellectual stimulation, personal engagement, and community fellowship – all at a time when American Higher Education faces critical challenges which will need the collective wisdom of an engaged citizenry to confront.

Richard Madsen