Senior College Centre
The Senior College Centre is “the branch of Senior College that provides services and organizes activities for all College members.” (Strategic Plan for the Senior College Centre, 2018) The Senior College Centre is the child of the merger between The Academic Retiree Centre with Senior College that resulted from the provostial review of the former in 2013. (For a description of the events that lead to the formation of Senior College and the Senior College Centre see The RALUT Story by Peter Russell.) According to the Strategic Plan, the purposes of the Senior College Centre are to: “ (i) to provide services of interest to academic retirees at the University of Toronto, (ii) to strengthen and maintain connections between the Centre and the University’s academic retiree community, and (iii) to make the College’s scholarly resources available to groups in the community outside the University.”
The Centre is physically located at 256 McCaul Street where there are two meeting rooms, a small lounge provided with reading material consisting of books and other publications donated by members of the College as well as with coffee and tea, and the office of the College’s Administrator. During “normal” times, that is in the absence of COVID, the Center is open on weekdays from 9 am to 4 pm during which hours the Administrator and/or volunteers are present to welcome visitors and to answer questions.
The Centre currently oversees, or plans to develop, a number of services and activities that are available for all members of the College. These include such things as: the Speakers Bureau which provides speakers for groups in the community; the offering of health education courses dealing with issues of relevance to Seniors; providing “technology” workshops; mounting art shows of work by members of the College.
The activities of the Senior College Centre, previously overseen by the Board of Management, now fall under the mandates of the Executive Committee of Council and the new standing committee of Council, the Senior College Centre Committee.
The Strategic Plan for Senior College Centre