April Program Chair - Bob van der Valk
- Apr. 6 "Passport to Penguins" – Vanessa Darras, naturalist, Somerset County Park Commission, will take you to the bottom of the globe in an adventure in learning about our black and white waddle-y friends, the penguins. She will discuss their varieties, their environment, their diet, and more. [video]
- Apr. 13 "Yoga" – Raghuvir (Ravi) Rustagi, yoga teacher, author, retired nuclear engineer and Old Guard member, will discuss the history and traditions of yoga and its relevance to the total health of seniors. Yoga asanas and pranayama postures will be demonstrated for performance in your chair. Join this Zoom class in your active-wear, having breakfasted at least one hour before. [video conference]
- Apr. 20 "The Art of Persuasion and Effective Negotiation" – Lawrence D. Eichen, attorney, negotiator, mediator. This presentation centers on The Power of E=MC^5, a unique formula that will exponentially improve anyone's negotiation abilities, whether for business purposes or to improve personal relationships. Emphasis will be on the five core components of the formula: Commitment, Confidence, Courage, Compassion, and Calmness. [video conference]
- Apr. 27 "World Oil Analysis" – Tom Kloza, Oil Price Information Service analyst, will discuss downstream oil markets from the perspective of his four decades of providing expert commentary to print and electronic media,especially during times of oil volatility. [video]
March 2021 Program Chair - Jay Leatherbee
- Mar. 2 "Women in the Revolutionary War" – Joel Farkas, a well-known lecturer at The Florham Institute for Lifelong Learning at Fairleigh Dickinson University, will talk about the support roles women played in the Revolutionary War including aspects little known to this day, such as the story of a woman who dressed as a man in order to fight on the front lines.. [video conference]
- Mar. 9 "Shipwrecked on a Deserted Island" – Old Guardian Jay Leatherbee will relate his experiences with five other people on a chartered 40-foot sailboat shipwrecked in the Bahamas. A storm came up suddenly on an overnight sail, and they tried unsuccessfully to seek refuge. They were washed up on a coral reef on an uninhabited island where Jay was marooned for six days before being rescued. [video conference]
- Mar. 16 "March Outlook 2021" – David G. Dietze, managing principal, senior portfolio strategist at Peapack Private Wealth Management, will speak on the outlook for markets in 2021. How will the new Biden administration affect the economy and the markets? How should you best position your investments amid the COVID-19 vaccine rollout? What potential tax changes may occur and how might they affect your income? [video conference]
- Mar. 23 "The U.S. Constitution" – Old Guard member, Nolan Asch, will be speaking about a very timely topic: the U.S. Constitution. He says to develop a deep understanding of the U.S. Constitution, we need to understand the events before, during, and after the May to September 1787 meeting in Philadelphia that we now call the Constitutional Convention. [video conference]
- Mar. 30 "Banking Now and in the Future" – Kevin Cummings, CEO and chairman of Investors Bank, which has become the 50th largest bank in the U.S., will talk about the history of banking since it became more regulated after 2008. He will also offer thoughts on expectations for the next four years. [video conference]
February 2021 Program Chairs - Mitch Erickson & Steve Varley
- Feb. 2 "The Fierce Urgency of Now" – Margaret McMenamin, President of Union County College, will describe the college's work to help students and their families achieve economic and social mobility through higher education. Since her arrival in July of 2010, President McMenamin has refocused the institution on student success with a particular emphasis on equity. UCC is a federally designated Minority Serving / Hispanic Serving Institution where 70% of the 20,000 students are Black or Hispanic. [video conference]
- Feb. 9 "A Contrarian View of Julius Caesar's Assassination" – Summit Old Guard's Foster Osborne will pose questions such as: Was the assassination a good or bad thing? Did he deserve it? Was he a great leader or a despicable tyrant? And what makes his assassination the most famous in history? (Spoiler alert: It helps to have William Shakespeare write about it). [video conference]
- Feb. 16 "Student/Partner Alliance (S/PA)" – Executive Director Maggie Momber will describe how Summit-based S/PA increases low-income student success through scholarships and mentoring. Over 25 years S/PA has supported more than 2,200 scholarships for high school students from the Newark and Jersey City areas. This combination is key to S/PA's 100% high school graduation and college admissions rate over the past five years. [video conference]
- Feb. 23 "COVID-19 Vaccines" – Dr. Ashish Parikh, Chief Quality Officer at Summit CityMD (formerly Summit Medical Group), will talk about COVID-19 vaccines, their safety and efficacy and will answer all our questions. [video conference]
January 2021 Program Chair - Al Aho
- Jan. 5 "What Should a Well-Informed Person Know About Computers?" – Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and one of the original Unix Pioneers at Bell Labs. Brian will describe his experiences teaching "Computers in Our World," a first year course designed to inform non-technical students how modern hardware, software and communications systems operate." [video conference]
- Jan. 12 "SARS-CoV-2 – The Mouse that Roared" – Robert Martin, former CTO of Bell Labs and VP at Bellcore, will discuss the historically quite tame SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 that is causing historic economic, political, and behavioral disruptions. Bob will cover COVID-19 – the cause, prevention, and treatment – and the consequential behaviors. Who would have thought a year ago we would become facile with terms like super-spreader and herd immunity? [video conference]
- Jan. 19 "Adventures in Biking Europe with a Father of the Internet" – Robert Lucky is a former executive director of research at Bell Labs and VP of research at Telcordia. In recent years, Bob took a dozen bike trips through Europe with his close friend, Len Kleinrock, one of the fathers of the Internet. These were roll-your-own, meticulously planned trips. What could possibly go wrong? His talk is about what they learned as well as the joys of these great adventures. [video conference]
- Jan. 26 "Future Cameras" – Shree Nayar is T.C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, head of the Columbia Vision Laboratory, and a member of the National Academy of Inventors. Shree will describe computational imaging and show examples of novel cameras that are changing the way visual information is being used by both humans and machines. He will also describe Bigshot, his educational experiential camera that has been used to teach science and photography to kids in underserved communities around the globe. [video conference]
