A program assistant who has worked in several different areas at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has retired after 13 years at UWSP and 33 years of state service.

Joan Collins retired last month as a program assistant III in University Centers/Conference and Reservations, a position which she has held for just over four years. Prior to that, she worked for three years in Orientation and Disability Services and for three years in the dean�s office at the College of Natural Resources. Her first job at UWSP was in Financial Aid where she worked from 1991 to 1994 after leaving UW-Madison Health Service.

A Lena native, Joan (Kugel) Collins came to UWSP as a student in 1966 and moved to Madison two years later. Following her marriage to Bob Collins, Joan worked for 20 years at UW-Madison. The couple and their two children returned to Stevens Point in 1989 when Bob took a job transfer with Otis Elevator. Currently one of their sons, Kelly, lives and works in Stevens Point and their other son, Chris, is in Brisbane, Australia, where he helped run a roller coaster at an amusement park for four months. The next stop on his adventures may be New Zealand.

Joan says her recent job duties in reservations were like putting together a big puzzle of events. She enjoyed the variety in her positions at UWSP, especially helping students with disabilities and graduate students in the CNR.

"When you work with students, there is something new every day," she says.

Joan and Bob have scheduled trips to Arizona in two weeks for Joan�s mother�s 89^th birthday, to Florida in March, to Salt Lake City in June, and in August to Montrose, Colo., for her brother�s 50^th birthday. Her avocations include exercise activities at the YMCA, playing golf, gardening at their Heffron Street home and pursuing genealogical records. Trips to Wisconsin cemeteries to search for ancestors� burial plots have become part of her research.

A special surprise for Joan and her family in recent years was finding an older brother who rejoined the Kugel clan. When her 60-year-old brother from Salt Lake City contacted them, she gained an additional sibling, several nieces and nephews and a whole new branch of the family.