Faculty Retirement Liaison

Professor Emeritus Don Brenneis is the UCSC Faculty Retirement Liaison. As an advisor for senate faculty who are considering retirement, Don can help facilitate a successful retirement process through:

• confidential meetings with individual faculty who would like to discuss their options, questions and concerns;
• advising faculty negotiating retirement arrangements with chairs and deans, including a Pathway to Retirement (PTR) agreement; and
• providing general support on navigating the process, helping connect faculty to more specialized resources (e.g., RASC, Fidelity etc.).

Don is a social and linguistic anthropologist with field research experience ranging from Fiji to federal science bureaucracies in Washington, DC. At the heart of his research have been an interest in the relationship between language and politics and a core concern with the question of how talk and other forms of communication make a difference in shaping and transforming communities. He has written on topics from children’s arguments and men’s gossip to the style and dynamics of research funding panel meetings. He taught for forty-five years, first at Pitzer College and then at UCSC, where he was active in shared governance and served as Chair of the Academic Senate. He has been active in various academic organizations, serving as President of the American Anthropological Association and editing several scholarly journals. He retired in 2019.

The PTR program is part of the campus commitment to supporting faculty in shaping their ongoing engagement with their departments and the broader scholarly community. It also aims to make transition to retirement a smoother process for both faculty and their programs. Don is eager as faculty retirement liaison to be available for consultation and conversation about how faculty retirement goals might most effectively be pursued.

Senate faculty are welcome to email Don directly: brenneis@ucsc.edu