…, must come to an end.

Here in REL we’ve been thinking about that old saying because we’ve now received formal notice from two members that their retirements are coming up soon.

So we thought that current students, alums, and friends of the Department would all want to know that Donna Martin, who has worked part-time in REL since 1997 (having started at UA in 1990) will be retiring on April 1, 2020.

And yes, Betty Dickey, who has worked at UA almost 33 years, steering REL’s main office for nearly all of that time — indeed: she’s the longest serving person in the Department’s more than 50-year history — will also be retiring as of April 1, 2020.

These are large shoes to fill, so we’ll soon begin searching for new staff members to add to the team, to help us with the next 30 years or so.

As you can imagine, with the changes in REL over the past 20 years the items tackled routinely by the main office — from accounting, room booking, and bringing new people onto payroll, to building semester schedules, submitting work orders for the building, planning guest visits, tracking majors and grads, and, yes, arranging for a pizza or two for all of those REL movie nights — have increased dramatically, and so we’re incredibly thankful for all of its support and the way that it has kept in-step with a Department that does things a little differently and isn’t afraid to experiment a bit.

Like asking Betty to star in a movie a few years ago…?

So be sure to say hi to Betty and Donna, when you see them next, and ask if they’re planning to take a cruise around the world or just looking forward to no longer processing all of that reimbursement paperwork.

Oh, and thank them, will you? Coz students and faculty alike all owe an awful lot to the support consistently offered by the main office — much of it behind the scenes. (Which was kind’a the point of that movie….) We couldn’t have done any of it without them.