by Vincent Cleary

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a generous retirement plan. Depending on age and length of service, faculty can receive up to 80 percent of their annual salary. With teaching careers completed, an ample pension, and offspring out on their own, retired faculty volunteer valuable time and expertise to the campus and the community.

To find out what my peers are doing and why they do it, I attended a meeting of the Retired Faculty Association. The Association gives members a chance to gather and “network,” as the younger generation would say.

President George Cernada, age 70, Public Health, presides over the group’s monthly meetings in the Campus Center, which attract about 60 of the group’s 240-plus members. Topics range from business items (Arthur Quinton, 83, Physics, urged continued support of the UMass Amherst Community Campaign) to engaging presentations (Jay Demerath, 71, Sociology, questioned, sometimes playfully, the constitutionality of faith-based agendas at home and abroad in his talk “Religion and Politics in the Bush Administration.”)

President Cernada continues to edit the International Quarterly of Community Health Education, a publication he founded in 1980. Many of its articles from “developing” countries would probably never be published otherwise because, says Cernada, “they don’t fit the mode, or criticize the status quo on development issues, or just need a lot of editing…which few editors are willing to do anymore.”

As election constable, Cernada oversees student voting on campus. Corey Corvalho, age 28, his liaison in the Student Legal Affairs Office, says “George is great at demystifying the voting process, especially for those voting for the first time.”

Why does he remain so involved? “When you grow up poor in the big city, you always need to give back,” says Cernada, a Somerville native. He enjoys keeping up with students, too. “I met a student from my own high school on a bus this fall. What a joy. And she was as excited as I was when she learned that I was sponsoring another student from our high school in Boston. With any luck she’ll attend a good college like UMass.”

Mary Anne Bright, Nursing, never completely retired. She continues to collect a salary. Among her course offerings are “Energy Healing and Therapeutic Touch” and “Holistic Health and Healing.” She also writes “countless” student recommendations. “Without the competing demands of being a full-time faculty member, I can really enjoy my teaching,” says Bright.

Lewis C. Mainzer, 79, Political Science, began teaching at the university in 1953, and in retirement, wears many hats. As program chairman for the Retired Faculty Association, he recruits speakers on literary, scientific, political, and campus topics likely to interest a varied group of retired faculty and librarians.

Mainzer is also president of the Board of Trustees. He works closely with the director of the library, development staff, and others to raise funds and organize events. “I feel privileged to support the library in some small measure,” he says. It’s an institution that’s “central to the intellectual life of UMass Amherst.”

Richard S. Stein, 82, Chemistry, participates in a project to produce biofuels from waste wood, in an effort to meet the energy shortage and fend off global warming. He writes articles, offers lectures, and produces videos for political candidates with progressive environmental views. He also works to strengthen science education in the schools, among other activities geared to saving the environment.

“In my attempts to understand nature, I have come to appreciate how marvelous it is and how we are just beginning to understand its complexity,” says Stein. “This drives me to think about ‘big problems’ like the origin of life, the nature of evolution, sustainability, and the future of our way of life, the world and the universe.”

Stein speaks for many of us retired faculty when he sums it all up: “I do it because I want to continue doing useful things.”