From Transition to Legacy: Reclaiming Purpose and Telling Your Story in Retirement

Dr. Kaye Manson Jeter is a retired professor, author, and motivational speaker specializing in retirement transition, purpose development, and legacy building. She is the author of Transitioning to Retirement: You Can’t Ride a Camel for the Rest of Your Life and Legacy in Words. As a member of AROHE’s Virtual Retirement Chapter, she brings both lived experience and professional expertise to her work, helping retirees remain connected, engaged, and purposeful beyond their institutional affiliations.

Exploring the Paradoxes of Life in Retirement

Larry Braskamp earned his B.A. from Central College and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He held major academic leadership roles at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Illinois, Loyola University Chicago, and Elmhurst University. A coauthor of Assessing Faculty Work and Putting Students First, he has consulted widely on institutional leadership and served on nonprofit boards. In retirement, his research centers on aging and retirement transitions.

Ageing Well: A Case Study in Leveraging Your Programming to Build Campus Connections and Investment

Stefanie Starkovich is a higher‑education engagement leader with 25+ years at the University of Washington, spanning student services, academic administration, and strategic communications. After completing degrees in history at Whitman College and the University of Minnesota, she shifted from doctoral study to administrative leadership. She later guided digital engagement strategy for UW Medicine’s $2B campaign. Stefanie now serves as Executive Director of the UW Retirement Association and Senior Director for Engagement Strategy in UW Alumni and Stakeholder Engagement.

Creating Community through Storytelling: Two Successful Memoir Models at Clemson's Emeritus College

Marty Duckenfield, a former teacher, spent 30 years at Clemson University, primarily with the National Dropout Prevention Center. She contributed to national service‑learning initiatives and led the southern regional network, publishing hundreds of resources on service‑learning and dropout‑prevention strategies. She conducted hundreds of conference workshops for educators nationwide. Since retiring, she has written two memoirs and has initiated and facilitated the Clemson Emeritus College Memoir Writing Group since 2021.

Wednesday October 7: Concurrent Session Two Speakers

Wellness Initiative in an Emeritus College: How a Fall Prevention Initiative Fostered Collaboration Across the University

Dr. Karen Kemper is an Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Clemson University in South Carolina. She has an MSPH and PhD from the University of South Carolina School of Public Health and has worked in hospital, community, and academic settings over the past 40 years. Her research has focused on physical activity promotion, disease prevention and management, and fall prevention. Her expertise is in physical activity, functional mobility assessments, and the role functional fitness plays in protecting health, mobility, and independence across the lifespan. She especially enjoys teaching and promoting health in the community.

Elderhood with Purpose: Challenging Ageism through Lifelong Learning

Ayn Welleford, Ph.D., is a Developmental Gerontologist with three decades at VCU focused on adult development, aging, person‑centered care, and disrupting ageism. She works to build age‑inclusive communities and strengthen the eldercare workforce through purpose‑driven, person‑centered approaches. As InterAge Director for LLI Chesterfield, she fosters connection, belonging, and reduced ageism across generations. A certified Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator, she leads community dialogues that challenge perceptions of aging and co‑create anti‑ageist strategies. She is known for saying, “Let’s do something that does something.

Rachel Ramirez has served as Executive Director of LLI Chesterfield since 2014. Her background includes roles in IT, nonprofit financial management, banking, and store leadership. She is active at Cloverhill Church and has supported Give Hope 2 Kids in Honduras. Rachel holds a bachelor’s in Organizational Leadership and Management from Regent University and an MPA with a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from VCU. She and her husband, Luis, enjoy time with their two sons, family, and friends, as well as biking, hiking, and traveling.

Connecting Retiree Online Experience to the Rapid World of Artificial Intelligence

Kathleen DeMarco s a retired assistant professor from Perimeter College of Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she taught courses across multiple modalities, including in‑person and online. After a decade‑long break from teaching, she returned in 2024 to teach an online course and witnessed how platforms had evolved—syllabi transformed into interactive modules shaped by lower‑level artificial intelligence. As AI accelerates and permeates academic life, she is interested in how retired faculty can stay current and how institutions can support them. She sees one promising pathway in the work of emeriti professors who maintain access to campus technology hubs.

Wednesday October 7: Concurrent Session Three Speakers

Keeping Retirees Socially Engaged Through Collaboration

Dr. Anderson is a Professor Emeritus (retired) in the Office of Faculty Affairs and Development, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University. He is best known for creating the National Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship Program, the nation’s oldest, largest, first true primary care faculty development fellowship program with over 600 clinical faculty graduates. He also manages the medical school’s Tenure System Faculty Mentoring Program and the New Faculty Orientation Program. Dr. Anderson has over 45 years of experience in working with junior faculty to improve their academic survival skills.

Strategies for Starting a Retirement Organization & Sustaining Its Growth Through Community Building

Dorothy Zinsmeister is a professor emerita of biology at Kennesaw State University (KSU). She served as chair of the Department of Biology/Physics for 12 years, and as Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for 11 years at the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (USG). She is an active member of the KSU retiree association steering committee. She currently plans and organizes the KSU retiree colloquium, and is the co-founder, founding president and member of the USG Retiree Council, now in its 10th year.

Clifton “Chip” Egan is dean emeritus of Clemson University’s College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. A Hanover College graduate with an MFA from Northwestern, he joined Clemson in 1976 and later chaired the performing arts department. A recipient of the Class of ’39 Award for Faculty Excellence, he has held multiple emeritus leadership roles and served regional theatre associations. He now chairs the Clemson Emeritus College Advisory Board.

How Retired Professors Might Use (and not use) Artificial Intelligence

Ann Hill Duin is Professor Emerita of Writing Studies and Graduate-Professional Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota where her work continues to focus on augmentation technologies, digital literacy, and human-AI collaboration. Together with Isabel Pedersen, Dr. Duin has published on AI futures: Writing Futures: Collaborative, Algorithmic, Autonomous (Springer, 2021) and Augmentation Technologies and Artificial Intelligence in Technical Communication: Designing Ethical Futures (Routledge, 2023). She serves as Liaison to AROHE for the University of Minnesota Retirees Association.

The Joy of Aging Metamorphosis

Dan Stone is an Emeritus Faculty member at the University of Kentucky and a Kentucky Master Naturalist, known for blending his academic expertise with a deep connection to nature and mindfulness practices. His career spans teaching, research, and community engagement, with a focus on data visualization, business analytics, and the intersection of technology and mindfulness. Stone’s approach to navigating life’s “aging metamorphosis” reflects a philosophy rooted in mindfulness in natural settings.

Reimagining the University as a Hub for Lifelong Transitions

Kate Schaefers, Ph.D. is Director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) as well as the founder of The Midlife Academy at the University of Minnesota. She co-leads The Nexel Collaborative, an organization focused on building connections and promoting best practices for leaders of midlife transition programs in higher educational institutions. Kate serves on the University of Minnesota Age Friendly University Council and on AARP MN’s Executive Council. She brings a background as a psychologist, career and leadership coach, with a specialty in career pivots at 50+.