Welcome
The trouble with retirement is you never get a day off.
~Abe Leamons
Communication, Contribution, and Collegiality
The Retirement Association aims to help you stay in touch with the friends you made while working at SFSU, to keep you informed about campus changes and retiree activism and concerns, to provide social events and learning opportunities for its members, and to help support the campus and its employees.
The Retirement Association traditionally has about four luncheons a year at restaurants in San Francisco or the northern Peninsula like Val's or the Basque Cultural Center; one will be a November holiday lunch, another is usually a St. Patrick's Day lunch. These are opportunities to get together with friends and colleagues from SFSU to talk about what we're doing now and what's going on at the campus, and to reminisce about "the good old days." Sometimes we'll have entertainment or a presentation/talk.
We also have outings to interesting local places. Recent such events included guided walks through the Mission District and the Filoli estate (in the spring when the gardens were in full bloom), and a guided backstage tour of the San Francisco Opera House, a hard-hat tour of the new J. Paul Leonard Library before it opened, Lamp Lighters Music Theater presentation of two Gilbert & Sullivan productions, and a Beach Blanket Babylon performance. Our Mare Island tour was so popular we had two of them. It featured a guided bus tour of historic sites in the Naval Shipyard including a chapel with Tiffany stained glass windows, a waterfront lunch, and a tour of a World War II "Mighty Midget" gunboat that Bill Mason has spent 6 years helping acquire and refurbish. Our most recent tour was to SFSU's Romberg Tiburon Center.
We distribute a periodic newsletter, the Off-Campus Bulletin, to keep members informed about Association activities, member activities (e.g., books published), and campus happenings. We have a representative on the Board of ERFA, the Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association for the California State University (CSU) system, who reports news about the State budget, California Public Employees' Retirement system (CalPERS), long-term care, and other items of interest to retirees from the CSU. And resident campus historian Meredith Eliassen contributes “San Francisco State’s History Corner” about some aspect of campus history.
Every other year we distribute a Membership Directory listing current members with their addresses, phone numbers, and emails in case you want to contact a former colleague.
The Retirement Association also provides career-related travel grants to current SF State faculty and staff which are really helpful in these days of state budget cuts.Each year, we award several $500 travel grants. We continue to seek donations to our Endowment Fund with the goal of funding the travel grants from the interest earnings of the endowment.
Please join us for the next phase of your life by completing the membership application form.