Time is running out to reserve your seat for the UFT’s annual Teacher Union Day.

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Although the official deadline is Oct. 20, you must act fast to reserve your place among the 1,500 members expected to turn out to help honor this year’s award winners.

The ceremony and luncheon will be held on Sunday, Nov. 2, at the New York Hilton Hotel. Fill out the registration form.

UFT Assistant Treasurer Mona Romain, who retired this year, will receive the Charles Cogen Award, the union’s highest honor for one of its members.

Until she chose not to seek re-election as a trustee on the Teachers’ Retirement System board last spring, Romain held that position since 1998.

“Mona has made invaluable contributions in her capacity as a TRS board member and as a UFT officer,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. “She has earned this award and then some.”

Widely admired for her wealth of knowledge about pensions, Romain shared, with her fellow board members, the fiduciary responsibilities of overseeing the policies, funding and investments of the retirement system to ensure benefits for the contributors and beneficiaries. Until this year, Romain was a co-author of the “Secure Your Future” column in the New York Teacher and co-edited the union’s PensioNews newsletter. She also trained the union’s large team of pension consultants.

Romain began her career as a teacher of mathematics in Brooklyn, first at IS 246 from 1971 to 1981, and later at Samuel J. Tilden HS, from 1981 to 1990. She served as a delegate to the Delegate Assembly from both schools. She was elected as the union’s assistant treasurer in 1997.

Other Teacher Union Day awardees include UFT Grievance Department Director Ellen Gallin-Procida, who will receive the Jules Kolodny Award; Staten Island Borough Representative Debra Penny, who will get the David Wittes Award; Staten Island Special Representative Lillian Kohler, who will be presented with the Sidney Harris Award; and Brooklyn Educational Liaison Farheen Malik, who will receive the Backer/Scheintaub Award.

The Audrey Chasen Award will go to Federation of Nurses/UFT members Cora O’Regan and Kati Tannous, who volunteered for a relief effort in the Philippines following the typhoon; and Marsh/Raimo awards will go to retired English teacher Gene Mann; Staten Island political activist Alain Metellus; Nyree Whittaker, the chapter leader at PS/IS 270 in Queens; District 12 Paraprofessional Coordinator Shauna Innis; District 20 Representative Ellen Driesen; District 14 Representative Ira Munet; and Donald Albright, the chapter leader at P 186, the Bronx.

The union will present awards to seven chapter leaders and principals of schools that exemplify a spirit of cooperation and professional partnership among all the members of the school community. The honorees will represent PS 30 on Staten Island, PS 180 in Brooklyn, Newcomers HS in Queens, PS 53 in the Bronx, the Facing History School in Manhattan, Cascades Center for Teaching and Learning in Manhattan and PS 177 in Queens.

The Trachtenberg and Smallheiser awards also will be presented while other honors will go to 20- and 10-year chapter leaders, to 50-year members, and to school secretaries, paraprofessionals and substitute vocational assistants who have become teachers.

The festivities will begin with breakfast at 8 a.m., and the awards ceremony will start promptly at 9 a.m.

For more information, email Denise Whitehead at dwhitehead@uft.org. Read about the awards given at the ceremony.