The President's Report
Senior University 2007
I am in the enviable position of giving a positive, optimistic, and encouraging report on the state of Senior University as we finish our first decade. We are continuing our mission to provide quality life-long learning to persons over age 50 in the Georgetown area.
Our membership is growing. After remaining rather stable around 550, our membership at the beginning of 2007 was slightly over 600 members, and now stands at 670 members. We continue to solicit new members with a low-key marketing program of recruiting at Sun City New Homeowner's meetings, occasional newspaper publicity, occasional exposure on News and Views and in the Sun Rays, and by widely distributed brochures.
Our class registrations are growing as well. The core of Senior University is our twice- yearly educational semesters. The spring semester in early 2007 surpassed that of 2006 by 9%, and the recently completed fall semester surpassed the fall semester of 2006 by 11%. We continue to offer an extremely wide variety of courses, and we are offering them in more time slots and at more locations. In an attempt to broaden participation of residents of old-town Georgetown, and working participants, we now offer classes Monday and Tuesday nights at Southwestern University and at the Georgetown Public Library.
About one-fourth of our members like to focus primarily on our travel program, which continues to offer both local and out-of-state trips noted for their excellence of accommodation, education, and attention to the comfort of the traveler. The travel program continues to financially strongly support the over-all program of Senior University, and in 2007 it contributed $14,000 to the budget. We anticipate even better travel participation in the future, despite fierce competition, because of improved marketing through our improved web page, and the aggressive use of email to our members.
This past year had some struggles, as our long-term office partner, the Georgetown Symphony Society, left us to open an independent office. We rose to this challenge by increasing the hours that our administrator spends on Senior University weekly, and we feel that member service from our office will only improve because of the change. We have been able to afford the entire office rent, and increase the administrator's salary because of a strong financial position.
Senior University has established a reserve fund to cover future unexpected and adverse events. We have been consistently "in the black" since 2002, and we no longer feel the need to do regular fund raising as a part of our program.
I encourage every member to get into the habit of periodically checking our web page. We have a volunteer web master, Aubrey Herzik, who works at his task as if it was his 40-hour-a-week job. Our "hits" to the web page have increased significantly this year. We now can accommodate earlier information about classes and travel than was possible in the past, and there is a wealth of other information, such as officer reports, travel trip photos, and even history.
In January of 2008, we will begin our second decade with a line-up of 33 different classes, in 37 different time slots, at 6 different geographical locations, which is an all-time record. We continue to move forward, with your continued support as members.
Stephen D. Benold MD
President
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