During the past year we lost five of our staunchest supporters: Bruce Black (a long time supporter and contributor), George Maslach (husband of our long time board member Doris Maslach),
Warren Michael (one of the most passionate supporters of the USCA I have ever met), George Yasukochi (a lifelong supporter of the cooperative movement), and most recently, Ted Johnston.

Ted Johnston was one of the original founders of the Alumni Association, and one of the strongest supporters of the USCA. Ted was involved with the USCA for nearly 70 years; first as a student, later as a major fundraiser for the Ridge Project (CZ), and then as a founder of the Alumni Association. He served on our Board continuously since its inception and was a former President of the Association. Even though he was very prominent in the USCA’s largest capital campaigns, his main focus was on scholarships to help those students who needed financial support. It is only fitting for the Board to create a new scholarship named in Ted’s memory. To fund this scholarship, we need to raise $25,000. I am pleased to tell you that, to date, we have raised over $14,000 towards that goal. If you would like to help us reach our goal, please send your contributions to the USCA.

This spring we held our first ever event outside of the immediate Berkeley area, a wine tasting and barbecue at the Cooper-Garrod winery in the hills above Saratoga. This event was a complete success, and I hope, a model for future events in other areas (see page 8 for story).

Planning is ongoing for an “all USCA signature event” that will involve students, alumni and friends. We are also exploring an alumni event for next spring that will feature a private concert. Keep updated through the website; information will be posted as plans become concrete.

We know that there are well in excess of 60,000 alumni of the USCA. We have the names and locations of a little more than 10,000 of these alumni. The unfortunate news is that only about 1% of the USCA alumni actively support the USCA. We need to increase our membership - the future of the USCA depends, in part, on us.

Why? We support the USCA through donations and contributions to the various programs such as the Scholarship program, and towards construction costs in seismic and disabled access retrofitting and in maintaining the housing infrastructure. Unfortunately, our expenditures to the USCA are in excess of our dues collections. All of us need to be actively engaged in getting new members. I hope you will answer the call and do what you can to get your friends to join.