President’s Report

Georgetown University Association of Retired Faculty and Staff Annual Report

2023-2024

Submitted by Suzanne Bronheim, President

This past year has been successful and reflects growth in the organization.

Membership

At the end of this year GU Retirees had over 160 dues-paying members. The membership committee has developed plans for the coming year to engage even more retirees in the organization.

Audrey Khoo, in the Department of Human Resources has created an application that will help us know all retirees and be able to automatically acknowledge their membership and dues payment, notify them of when dues payments are due and reach out to individuals before they retire to obtain an email where we can connect with them. Hopefully this will help with the issue of losing contact with retirees because they lose their GU email addresses.

Special Events

There was an array of special events this year in-person, on Zoom and hybrid, including social events, events about health and wellness, and opportunities to learn from an array of experts. Across all these events there were 424 registrations. These events include:

  • Meet Our New GU Head Basketball Coach
  • Elegant Aging: Preserving our infrastructure: Heart, Soul, and Enduring Inflammatory disease
  • GU’s Strategy for the Capitol Campus & the Vision for Engaging the City and a tour of new buildings on the Capital Campus
  • Annual holiday party in partnership with the GU Benefits Office
  • Living Your Retirement
  • A Special Conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci
  • Kreeger Museum Docent-Led Tour and Lunch at Chef Geoff’s
  • Annual Mass and Luncheon for New Members

GU Learning Community

This year the GULC offered an excellent set of short courses. This year there were 200 registrations from retirees and community members for the courses. These courses include:

  • The Jewish Holocaust: A Brief Overview, Instructor: Prof. LeRoy Walters
  • Biden’s Presidency, Prof. Stephen Wayne
  • Cryptography: From Caesar to Ultra, from Bitcoin to WhatsApp – And how mathematics plays a crucial role, Prof. Hans Engler
  • White Supremacy as a Theory of History: How a Christianized Race Dominance Culminated in the Capitol Coup, Prof. Edward Ingebretsen
  • Art and Medicine, Prof. Caroline Wellbery
  • Shakespeare’s Comedies, Prof. Michael Collins
  • Simone Weil: On Human Dignity and the Crisis of International Law, Prof. Frank Ambrosio,
  • Evolution and Faith: How Much Can Biology Explain? Prof. John F. Haught
  • Catholicism in America Today, Prof. Chester Gillis
  • Wives on the Threshold of Murder: Dangerous Housekeeping in Greek Tragedy, Prof. Victoria Pedrick,
  • Jorge Luis Borges and the Nature of Fiction, Prof. Gwen Kirkpatrick
  • Technological Transformations, Prof. Betsy Page Sigman

Newsletter

The bi-monthly newsletter continued this year offering information about events across the university, updates on university activities, information about GU Retirees events and opportunities and tips for health and wellness from the Office of Faculty and Staff Benefits.

Philanthropy

We made donations to:

  • Department of Human Resources’ annual Eileen Fenrich Sponsor a Family Program at the holidays.
  • Hoya Hub, a food pantry on campus to address the needs of students and staff who experience food insecurity.

Research Grants

GU Retirees continues to solicit applications for and review requests for the $700 research grants provided by the Provost’s office. This year we had six applications and all were approved for funding beginning in the next fiscal year.

New this year

There were two new initiatives undertaken this year.

Personal Development for Community Service Grants

The ExCo decided that since not all members were actively engaged in research, that the organization could offer a different grant program that applied to any member. This new program is the Grants for Personal Development for Community Service. GUARFS will award up to three $500 grants for the 2024-25 academic year to its members to support their individual growth and development in activities for the good of the community. The new grants program is in addition to the existing and ongoing research grants program.

The dual purposes of the grants are to:

  1. Assist retired Georgetown faculty and staff to contribute to the welfare of the community, locally or globally, and to serve the public interest.
  2. Enable the grant recipient to further his or her own personal growth and development in the course of meeting the community welfare purpose.

One such grant was approved this year.

GU Retirees Book Club
  • In the survey of members last year, the activity that was most endorsed was a book club. This spring two book clubs were launched. They meet monthly on Zoom and are facilitate by Veronica Salles-Reese and Artemis Kirk. Each group has 6-8 members.

First election of officers

Based on a Constitutional Amendment passed at last year’s annual meeting, an election was held for officers at this year’s meeting. The new officer this year is Gwen Kirkpatrick as Vice-President.

Who did the work?

This Year’s ExCo

Suzanne Bronheim, President
Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Senior Policy Associate, Georgetown University Center for and Human Development

Kevin Conry, Vice-President and Events Coordinator
Former VP for Law Strategic Development & External Affairs and currently Adjunct Professor of Law.

John Pierce, Secretary
Former University Registrar and Assistant Provost; currently Registrar Emeritus and Special Assistant to the Provost with responsibility for academic ceremonies.

Mary Anne Mahin, Treasurer
Former Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer

Veronica Salles-Reese, Learning Community Program Coordinator
Associate Professor of Latin American Literature Emerita. Former director of Latin American Certificate and Ecuador Summer Program.

Martha Swanson, Membership Coordinator
Former Director of the Center for Student Programs (now the Center for Student Engagement)

Stanley Nollen, Grants Committee Chair
Adjunct Professor of International Business, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
McDonough School of Business

Edward Quinn, Benefits Liaison Chair
Former Secretary of the University

Bill Licamele, Medical Center Liaison
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and former Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, School of Medicine

Joseph A. Page, Law Center Liaison
Professor of Law Emeritus, Georgetown Law Center

William Reynolds, Marketing Coordinator
Former Associate Vice President of Alumni Relations and Executive Director Georgetown University Alumni Association.

Bruce Douglass, Past President
Associate Professor Emeritus, former Chair of the Department of Government, and Dean of the Faculty, Georgetown College

Committees:

Membership:

  • Martha Swanson, Chair
  • Ioan Suciu
  • Ed Quinn
  • Michael Smith
  • William Reynolds
  • Mary Anne Mahin
  • William Licamele
  • Bruce Douglass

Special Events:

  • Kevin Conry, Chair
  • Stanley Nollen
  • Joseph Page
  • Mary Anne Mahin
  • Martha Swanson
  • Douglas McCabe
  • Ed Quinn
  • Stephen Link
  • John Pierce
  • William Licamele
  • Michael Smith

GU Learning Community:

  • Veronica Salles-Reese, Chair
  • Stanley Nollen
  • Suzanne Bronheim
  • Gwen Kirkpatrick

Data Committee:

  • Ed Quinn, Chair
  • John Pierce
  • Kevin Conry
  • William Reynolds
  • William Licamele
  • Charles Leonhard ex-officio

Grants:

  • Stanley Nollen, Chair
  • Veronica Salles-Reese
  • John Pierce
  • Robert Douglass

Our Thanks

As always, the work of GU Retirees would not be possible without the support and partnership of various arms of the university. We thank the following for their support:

  • Provost Robert Groves and members of his office for their enthusiastic support and funding the research grant program.
  • Charles DeSantis, Rachel Bridges and the staff of the Office of Faculty and Staff Benefits
  • Charles Leonhardt and the UIS team
  • Devon Jina, Audrey Khoo and the team in Human Resources
  • Jaeidah Flowers for producing the newsletter and sending out our communications
  • The President’s Office for sponsoring our year-end luncheon this year
  • Sarah Reardon from the Jesuit Community for help with luncheon logistics
  • Jim Wickman and Owen Ruggiero from the Campus Ministry team and Fr. Ron Anton and Fr Mark Bosco from the Jesuit Community for the year end Mass
  • Office of Community Engagement for publicizing the GU Learning Community in the Georgetown University Neighborhood News

To Read Last Year’s Report: Click Here