The Curriculum Committee (CC) had a Retirement party for Therese Stevens. We were thanking her for all that she has done to make sure that our courses run smoothly.
Therese joined the CC ten years ago. She soon became the committee secretary. Then she took on the role of co-chair of the committee. Each CC member is given a list of coordinators to work with as a liaison. Liaisons are asked to gather all of the information that is needed for the presentation of the classes. This includes Coordinator information, location, dates, and description of the course. Ten years ago all of this information was gathered on paper and given to Therese for advertising the courses. As the PLATO website matured, the job became more complicated and Therese became the website presence for the CC committee. She gathered all of the needed data and made sure that it was correctly put on the courses page. Therese was Co-Chair of the CC Committee for years while doing these other jobs. That meant meeting with the Board of Directors to report on the work of the CC and report back to the CC what was needed. Therese set up the agenda for the meeting and supervised the minutes.
More recently, Therese became the Course Planner. She wrote the articles spotlighting many different coordinators. At first we were changing the articles every two weeks, then three weeks, then once a month. During the pandemic Therese was very involved with Paul Thompson (then Committee Chairman) in preparing coordinators and PLATO members on using Google Meet, including meeting in groups online with coordinators and meeting individually with coordinators to practice having a course online or hybrid.
As PLATO has about 50 courses a year, that often meant working many hours to get the work complete. In addition, Therese worked to get the CC members to do their part of the plan. Lots of calls and emails were completed. Some of us depended on Therese to have answers to all of our questions. Of course, she always knew what we were to do.
At the retirement party, as we were discussing all that Therese has done, I was thinking about a talk that I had just heard in one of my classes. I am thinking of all the time and energy it takes to present an hour’s lecture with pictures and various items that go with it. That was just one hour in one class. Then, I began to think of all the lectures given in a week, in a month and in a year. It is amazing. PLATO is run by volunteers and they are willing to give of their time and energy just for the fun of it.
A big thank you to Therese and all who give so much to PLATO, where the love of learning never grows old!
