Ninety-two St. Thomas employees, including 70 staff members and administrators and 22 faculty members, have chosen to participate in the 2013-14 voluntary retirement incentive plans and will retire May 31.

Deborah Sagstetter, Rewards and Recognition Manager and Human Resources Partner said the program has been offered to both faculty and staff. Eligible employees who decide to take advantage of the program will receive one year of salary plus benefits.

To be eligible for the program, faculty and staff members must have worked for St. Thomas for at least ten years, and they must meet the rule of 70, which means that a person’s age plus their years of service must equal 70. Sagstetter said the university hopes that this incentive will present long-term employees with more opportunities.

“There were two objectives: one, to give a financial incentive to individuals who may have had an interest to retire, but for whatever reasons—especially financial—they weren’t quite ready. So if they were ready to retire, they could voluntarily make the decision,” Sagstetter said. “The second objective was on the university’s side to deploy resources should we decide to align with student needs or align with Dr. Sullivan’s plans.”

Executive Adviser to the President Susan Alexander said there are many reasons for the large number of people choosing to retire. “I think a lot of people are eager to make a change in their lives,” Alexander said. “I know of one person who’s just interested in a different career path, and she’s using the incentive to explore that.”

“The important thing for the institution is it’s an opportunity for our long-term employees to make a good transition,” Alexander said.

Alexander said the university may use adjunct faculty to fill the gap left by retirees.

“It’s a little bigger number than we thought it would be, so we will probably have to use more adjuncts for the first year. It takes a year to replace a faculty member in any case,” Alexander said. “There’s at least one department that’s pretty hard hit, but we can’t disclose that at this time.”

Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice Peter Parilla said he will take the opportunity to retire.

“The decision [to retire] was difficult for me because I love my job. At the same time, the opportunity was too good to pass up,” Parilla said. “I’ve been planning for retirement for some time, but didn’t think about it concretely until the incentive was offered. There were rumors about the incentive before it came out, but I wasn’t aware of the specifics until the documents were released. I don’t have specific plans other than to do some traveling. I’ll be looking into volunteer opportunities, but I am undecided about which I will select.”

Jeffery McLean of the mathematics department made his retirement decision last summer after his wife retired.

“It seemed like the time to move on, but I will miss the students and my colleagues,” McLean said.

A reception to thank retirees for their years of service will take place at 3 p.m. on May 22 in Woulfe Alumni Hall.

Michelle Doeden can be reached at doed1842@stthomas.edu