About the Institute

The Wisdom Institute:
UMBC’s Association for Retirees

Background

Wisdom Institute Group photo

The UMBC community, like other universities, is experiencing an increase in retirements as baby boomers mature. Recognizing this demographic shift, more campuses are creating formal programs to channel the knowledge and energy retired faculty and staff can continue to provide to their university community. Importantly, campuses also continue to provide opportunities for retirees that offer personal and social enrichment. UMBC is no exception.

To tap into the valuable potential of emeritus professors at UMBC, a Hrabowski Innovation grant was awarded to Craig Saper and Leslie Morgan in 2012 to create the Wisdom Institute.

The three stated primary purposes of the initial Wisdom Institute were:

  1. to tap the valuable potential of UMBC’s emeritus faculty by inviting and organizing their continuing association with UMBC
  2. to connect the participants to the ongoing life and growth of the University
  3. to have participants teach in the wisdom tradition

Many emeritus faculty were successfully engaged through the Wisdom Institute. UMBC is building on these efforts and a new Wisdom Institute with a broader mission has been created.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the WI is to foster an ongoing and meaningful relationship for retired faculty and staff with UMBC and the broader community. This will be achieved through programming and others forms of  engagement with UMBC and its external communities.

Organization

The concept of community is central to this new organization. The Wisdom Institute is UMBC’s association for all retirees. Community from the Old French communite referenced “commonness, everybody.” The Latin communitatum was “merely a noun of quality” meaning “community, society, fellowship, friendly intercourse…” and communis “common, public, general, shared by all or many.” In English, community refers to “a sense of society, or association of persons having common interests or occupations.” (Online etymology) The Wisdom Institute, as newly constituted, will offer opportunities to all retirees for continued connection with the campus community consistent with the focus on community embodied in the root meaning of the word community.

Recognizing community as a seminal theme, all retirees will automatically be members of the Wisdom Institute upon retirement. Persons already retired will be “grandfathered” into the Association. There is no cost for membership and the type and degree of ongoing engagement is to be determined by the retiree. The task of the Wisdom Institute is to create a menu of possibilities to benefit retirees, and/or the campus, as well as the broader community. A governing Board comprised of retired faculty and staff is in place for this work.