SAVE THE DATE: WISE’s annual membership meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 4 in Hagan Hall on the Assumption campus. Lunch will be served, and members will vote on new officers and two bylaws changes. We have asked President Cesareo to speak about the new degree programs Assumption is offering and about the plan to redesignate the college as a university.

WISE Has A First! The Curriculum Committee takes very seriously the evaluations that you fill out for each class. Jane Gilligan, Evaluation Coordinator, reviews every one and writes a detailed letter to each Course Leader informing them of how their class was received. For the first time that anyone can remember, all courses in Session C were rated superb! This rating is the highest possible. The hard work of the members and chair of the committee is paying off!

Snapshot of New Members. We now have 58 new members who joined WISE for the Spring 2019 C & D sessions. At the time of New Member Orientation in January when we had 34 new members, we learned that:

• three are returning members.
• two found us through a web search and five through publicity including brochures in libraries; 16 learned about WISE from friends, relatives, or neighbors.
• two members live 35 miles or so from Worcester (Thompson, CT and Framingham, MA) and one comes all the way from Watertown (46 miles away).
• 10 are teachers (including one each from WPI, UMass, and Assumption College).
• four have been President or CEO of an organization.

• As follow up actions based on the report of the Planning and Operations Task Force that was accepted by the Council last month,
  • I announced that Pat Hurton has been appointed to a new position as Volunteer Coordinator. In that role she will focus on identifying new volunteers and developing ways to acknowledge the key contributions volunteers make to our “member-driven organization.”
  • The Council affirmed that a membership headcount of 540 (64 more than the current number) is the threshold at which further projections will need to be done to assess whether current resources can support a larger number of members.
    • A key concern expressed was the insufficient office space provided for staff support. As WISE’s membership and programs have grown (and will continue to grow), more work time is required of the Director, Office Manager, and work study student. Currently the space accommodates only two work desks.
• The Travel Committee has been dissolved. This decision was based on the fact that, despite the time and effort that has gone into planning trips sponsored by WISE, the number of WISE members who actually join these trips is very small. While we will still inform members about trips sponsored by organizations with which we have a relationship (e.g., WAM), we will no longer sponsor our own.
  Thanks are due to Barbara Kupfer for trying mightily to get a travel program off the ground.
• A discussion about how many at-large members are needed on the Council was held. The Bylaws allow a maximum of eight. After reviewing the recent history of at-large appointments, discussing how important the role of at-large member is, and recognizing the large size of the Council’s membership, Council decided to (1) institute a system of rolling appointments and (2) limit the number of at-large appointments to a maximum of four.

Owl Wisdom

By Sarah Ransohoff and Johnny DiNapoli
The New Yorker, April 9, 2019