Retirement event Thursday for Ron Schaefer

The UNMC community is invited to a retirement tea for Ron Schaefer, director of planning and construction for UNMC.

The event will be held from 2-4 p.m. Thursday in the Sorrell Center in the common area on the second floor.

Schaefer joined UNMC in January 1995 to manage the production of The Lied Transplant Center.

In 2000, he was appointed director of facilities planning and construction with responsibilities for the planning, design and construction of the UNMC campus. Since that time, UNMC has grown by more than 2.5 million square feet and renewed its education space by developing a student plaza area surrounded by new academic buildings, renovating older buildings and greatly increasing its research laboratory capacity.

“Ron has been a huge asset to the growth of the medical center,” said Ken Hansen, associate vice chancellor of facilities at UNMC. Pointing to the list of projects Schaefer has been involved with, he said, “Ron’s led the charge to renew the majority of the education and research space on campus including new construction for the College of Medicine, College of Public Health, College of Nursing in Omaha, Lincoln, Kearney and Norfolk, and the Durham Research Centers, along with total renovation of the Eppley Cancer Institute. Ron has changed the landscape of UNMC forever.”

Prior to joining UNMC, Schaefer spent nearly 22 years with Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, starting in 1970, and its successor, US WEST Communications. At US WEST, he held various engineering management and operations positions and eventually directed the design and construction of that company’s equipment, office and service buildings in the five states making up the regional telephone company’s service area.

He holds a bachelor of science degree in construction science from the College of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Schaefer serves as a member of the board of directors of the Munroe-Meyer Institute at UNMC, the Nebraska Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and the advisory board of the Margre H. Durham Center for Western Studies at the Joslyn Art Museum.