The UVM Retired Faculty and Administrative Officers (RFAO) Organization is a long-established organization on campus with focus upon issues and concerns to the 500+ retired faculty and administrative officers.  The RFAO represents the interests of retired faculty and administrative officers on campus and provides relevant and important information to RFAO members.

About the RFAO:

Vision:

The UVM Retired Faculty and Administrative Officers Organization aspires to enhance the contact between members and current faculty and administrative officers to maximize the wellbeing and educational experiences of all members of the UVM community.

Mission:

The UVM Retired Faculty and Administrative Officers provides a variety of services that enrich the lives of its members and benefit the university and the greater community.

RFAO Goals:

  • To provide a wide range of activities, including educational, informational, cultural, social, and volunteer opportunities
  • To monitor and share information on benefits affecting health and life style choices
  • To advance all modes of communication with its members, the university, and the greater community
  • To assist the University of Vermont in accomplishing its mission and goals

Membership:

Retired faculty and administrative officers are automatically, upon their official date of retirement, members of the UVM-RFAO. RFAO members are also automatically included in the RFAO listserv from which UVM communications and communications from the RFAO are regularly sent.

We encourage all retired faculty and administrative officers to participate in UVM-RFAO activities, so as to maintain and enrich interactions with colleagues who have worked together for many years, as well as to stay connected to UVM.

Current RFAO President:

Professor Emeritus
Michael Gurdon (email link)

The Executive Board invites all RFAO members to send comments, suggestions, and raise issues to the Board. Contact the President or any RFAO Executive Board member (see menu for members & emails).

Updates Concerning the New 2023 Cigna MA Plan

  • Statement (3/8/2023 PDF) from the RFAO Executive Board concerning the Cigna MA plan with suggestions on how to navigate effectively with Cigna and health care providers.
  • For details of the Cigna PPO MA plan go to the UVM Human Resources website under Retirement Resources.  Scroll down to Benefits and 65+ Medical Plan.

Current RFAO Executive Board Activities

Your Executive Board meets monthly except in June and July and is involved in the following activities:

  • Working with UVM officials on matters such as health care insurance and other post-retirement benefits
  • Maintaining our website and an RFAO listserv to keep members up-to-date on Executive Board activities
  • Hosting annual fall and spring luncheons with a guest speaker
  • Administering the UVM Retired Scholars Award Program
  • Working with the UVM Foundation
  • Involvement in the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE)

RFAO-FORUM Listserv

The RFAO established the RFAO-FORUM listserv that is a bidirectional forum for communication among RFAO members. The RFAO-FORUM is separate from the UVM-RFAO listserv, which is unidirectional providing UVM & RFAO announcements to members. The RFAO-FORUM is a means for RFAO members to communicate and converse with other RFAO members.

To join the RFAO-FORUM, send an email and include the following text in the body of the message:
subscribe RFAO-FORUM first_name last_name
After sending the email, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to activate your subscription.

To post to the RFAO-FORUM, send your message to the RFAO-FORUM listserv using the same email address that you used to join the listserv.

UVM Retired Scholars Award Program

The Office of the Provost in conjunction with the Executive Board of the RFAO have made the following awards for 2022-2023 to:

  • Angela Patten (Senior Lecturer Emerita of English). To continue the next phase in the creation of original poems inspired by visits to three medieval mechanical and astronomical clocks in Munster, Germany, Bern, Switzerland, and Cremona, Italy.
  • Donald Ross (Research Professor Emeritus of Plant and Soil Science). For unanticipated page charges not covered by the "transformative agreement" established between UVM and Wiley Publishing for the accepted article in the Soil Science of America Journal titled "Groundwater input drives large variance in soil manganese concentration and reactivity in a forested headwater catchment".
  • Patrick Hutton (Professor Emeritus of History). To support the writing of an invited scholarly article for the Journal of the Philosophy of History focusing on a comparison of the work in historiographical theory of the German historian Reinhart Koselleck and the American Hayden White.

For details about the UVM Retired Scholars Award Program, go to the Provost's website.