Tag Archives: Members

Member information

2024-2025 Named Grant Honoree

President Carol Steinhaus presents Laurie Lotter with this year’s Named Grant Award

The Marquette Branch of the American Association of University Women has chosen Laurie Lotter as the Named Grant Award Winner of 2024-2025.

Laurie willingly took on the job of Recording Secretary two years ago, and she proven to be a real treasure in this role. She is aware of deadlines and dates, and her minutes are complete and rarely need corrections or additions.

Since then, she has volunteered for additional duties. She attended the State Chapter meeting in 2024, bringing back helpful information and items to share as prizes for our game night. She represented us well, we are sure.

In March of this year, Laurie took on the duty of raising awareness about pay inequities between men and women. She made the display and staffed several events, including one on the NMU campus, labeled “Pay Day Pop-Up” and another at Ore Dock Brewing Company called, “Equity + Ales”. She gathered, printed, and distributed information about pay disparities, accompanied with “Pay Day” candy bars.

Laurie assists the board in several ways. In addition to taking minutes, she has offered her viewpoints during our board meetings. Often, she has been able to contribute clarifying wording which has helped us arrive at  concise and clear motions much more quickly. She is a very organized person who thinks about potential problems and offers solutions to those potential problems before they occur and the Branch president has greatly appreciated Laurie’s assistance in many thoughtful and appropriate ways. She has provided many hours of assistance to our book sales, bringing some new ideas and hours of effort.

Laurie, our Marquette branch members greatly appreciate your efforts, and we wanted to recognize you for your cheerful help, both in front of and behind the scenes. In your honor, a $500 contribution is being sent from our chapter to the national AAUW organization.

 

April Book Group Information

The AAUW Book Group will be held on Thursday, April 3, at 12:30 pm to discuss An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris. Margie West will be our hostess, and Meg Goodrich will lead the discussion. That will wrap up our reading for 2024-2025 and we will meet in May to determine book selections for 2025-2026. Please don’t hesitate to contact Karen Rudisill if you interested in joining us!

Robert Harris returns to the thrilling historical fiction he has so brilliantly made his own. This is the story of the infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage.

Paris in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of twenty-thousand. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that “proved” Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus’s guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself.

Bringing to life the scandal that mesmerized the world at the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Harris tells a tale of uncanny timeliness––a witch hunt, secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, the fate of a whistle-blower–richly dramatized with the singular storytelling mastery that has marked all of his internationally best-selling novels.

For March, our chosen book is Leaving: A Novel  by Roxana Robinson. We will meet for discussion at 12:30pm on Thursday, March 6 at the home of Meg Goodrich. Our discussion leader will be Karlyn Rapport.

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year • One of the Los Angeles Times 15 Best Books of the Year • A Chicago Public Library Must-Read of 2024 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2024

What risks would you be willing to take to fall in love again?

If you are not already a member of our Book Club and would like to attend in person or via ZOOM, contact us!

February Book Club

For February, our chosen book is Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War I. We will meet for discussion at 12:30pm on Thursday, February 6 at the home of Karlyn Rapport.

In the momentous days from April 28 to May 2, 1945, the world witnessed the death of two Fascist dictators and the fall of Berlin. Mussolini’s capture and execution by Italian partisans, the suicide of Adolf Hitler, and the fall of the German capital signaled the end of the four-year war in the European Theater. In Five Days That Shocked the World, Nicholas Best thrills readers with the first-person accounts of those who lived through this dramatic time.

If you are not already a member of our Book Club and would like to attend in person or via ZOOM, contact us!

Book Club Discussion in January

Book Club Discussion for January

Our next book discussion will be at 12:30pm on Thursday, January 9 at the Women’s Federated Clubhouse in Marquette. Carol Capuccio will lead our discussion of The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools.

“[A] lively account.” —New York Times Book Review

In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

If you are not already a member of our Book Club and would like to attend in person or via ZOOM, contact us!

Book Club for December

Our next book discussion will be at 12:30pm on Thursday, December 5 at the Clubhouse. Susan Shaver will lead the discussion of The Violin Conspiracy by Brendon Slocumb.

The riveYellow background with a violin that has section of blue, fuchsia, orange and light greenting story of a young Black musician who discovers that his old family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius: when it’s stolen on the eve of the world’s most prestigious classical music competition, he risks everything to get it back.

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music.

When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he’s lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.  https://www.brendanslocumb.com/the-violin-conspiracy

If you are not already a member of our Book Club and would like to attend in person or via Zoom, contact us!

In honor of AAUW members…

Donations honoring AAUW members may be sent via check to AAUW-Marquette and addressed to AAUW Financial Vice President Ruth Ziel, 734 Lakewood Lane, Marquette, MI 49855. On your check, please indicate whether your donation is for Greatest Need, STEM, or Scholarship Fund Campaign.

Thank you for your thoughtfulness!
in honoring women who have been tireless advocates
for equity for women and girls.