Press Release

For Immediate Release
June 10, 2003

Contact: Pam Henning, (608) 267-2929

Technical College Instructors Elect Pedersen to Teachers Retirement Board

MADISON -- Department of Employee Trust Funds Secretary Eric Stanchfield announced that technical college instructor members of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) elected R. Thomas Pedersen to serve as their representative on the Teachers Retirement (TR) Board. Pedersen, an accounting and economics instructor at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College-New Richmond, is also a certified public accountant and holds a masters in business administration degree from the University of Michigan.

In April, the Department of Employee Trust Funds distributed approximately 5,364 ballots to technical college instructor members, who cast 1,256 ballots representing 26.9% of the total. Pedersen received 71.7% of the votes. The other candidate was Terry Bilderback, a computer information systems instructor at Chippewa Valley Technical College.

About the TR Board

The 13-member TR Board advises the Employee Trust Funds (ETF) Board on retirement and other benefit matters involving public school, vocational, state and university teachers; acts on administrative rules and authorizes or terminates teacher disability benefits and hears disability benefit appeals. Nine of the 13 members are directly elected.