“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” — Socrates

Seniors used to dream of retiring to a mountaintop aerie or beach bungalow, usually near a golf course. It’s a different retirement today as many are seeking to spend their later years in a college or university town, a trend the Wall Street Journal noted in an article last December.

The reporter cited four couples who chose to retire to university communities in Alabama (Birmingham), Oregon (Portland), Texas (Austin) and North Carolina (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill).

As the Journal noted, Jim Bowers, a newcomer from Vermont to the RDU area, had always lived in a college town and “felt that being near Duke University, North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was an important part of the quality of life” he sought and enjoyed.

Research shows that people feel younger when they are surrounded by 20-year-olds. Seniors also like the perks that come with being part of college life: the plays, concerts, guest speakers, the library and even just hanging out. It is the only model community that is truly intergenerational by definition, offering seniors the best part of college life.

Back to School at Duke

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates
than that he found time, when he was an old man,
to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

 — Michel de Montaigne

Lifelong learning began at Duke University in 1977 as part of the Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement, a joint venture of Duke Continuing Education and the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

It became a grantee of the Bernard Osher Foundation in 2004 with the introduction of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), one of 117 lifelong learning institutes nationwide.

The OLLI at Duke currently has 1500 members, 50 years of age and older. Its goal is to “rekindle former interests and pursue new ones in classes without papers or tests, where members have in common a passion for learning and all the benefits that come from keeping mind and body healthy, active and engaged.”

The curriculum has a variety of non-credited courses focusing on the arts and sciences. These have no educational requirement but have been requested by the students and members of the OLLI.

Classes are held weekly for 90 minutes in the morning and early afternoon hours. In the fall and winter, the courses last for 11 to 12 weeks; in the spring, for five to six weeks. Instructors are peer teachers, professors, graduate students, scholars and community experts.

The Institute is member-based. Anyone can join including homemakers, high-school dropouts, professionals and newcomers. Financial aid is available.

For more information contact Garry Crites, Director
at 919-684-2703 or garry.crites@duke.edu.

Seniors Returning to the Classroom

Britt Pugh, Graham

Britt Pugh commutes almost daily, sometimes with her sister, from her home in Graham to pursue a variety of subjects in her OLLI classes at Duke.

When I spent a year on a fellowship at Tufts University, I discovered that most of the educational opportunities Boston offered could also be found in Piedmont North Carolina. Returning to Graham, I commuted to a job in Chapel Hill and in my spare time, since 1996, enrolled in non-credit classes on the Duke University campus, offered through the OLLI program.

Since science had been my major, I was more interested in history and literature courses. My favorite class, to which I still belong, is “Read and Discuss,” a peer-based learning class of which many are core members. Peer teaching is not the only method of class organization. The symposium classes I have taken have a different professional lecturer each time. I have enrolled in lots of exercise classes such as belly dancing, line dancing, weights for seniors, and Tai Chi.

Most classes are taught by experts in their field including ambassadors who have retired from the US Foreign Service. I have even taken cooking classes, learning the art of preparing various cuisines. Dilip Barman, a long-time OLLI photography and philosophy instructor, is a professional photographer and leads the Triangle Vegetarian Society. He has taught vegetarian cooking for years and is a certified instructor of the successful Food for Life program of evidence-based nutrition.

My sister and I are currently taking an art class, “Traveling into the Past via Art: Celtic, Byzantine, Romansque and Early Medieval,” patterned after the British Museum’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects.” Each session features a treasure you can view in a nearby museum, the jumping-off point for discussion of larger issues. Faculty from nearby universities, colleges, and museums put these treasures into their historical context. We learn what each object meant to the people who created, admired, or used it. As we hear stories about the object’s past, we learn how it connects to other objects created at the same time. As we visit local museums, we discuss and examine what we have seen.

The leader, Dr. Linda Carl, has had a career involved in varied arts activities. At UNC-Chapel Hill, she was assistant provost, developed programs for “Adventures in Ideas,” and is currently a docent at Ackland Art Museum.

OLLI has three semesters: Fall, Winter and Spring. Classes generally meet once a week for 1.5 hours; the price is usually $90 per course a semester. The more classes a student takes, however, the less expensive the next course.

The preface to Winter 2014 Learning for Life: OLLI at Duke has this quote: “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” It was by Thomas Huxley. Not bad for lifetime learners!

Herb Fussman, Chapel Hill

Herb Fussman knew that tennis could not fill his days when he retired to Chapel Hill. He soon found that classes at Duke fit in nicely with his retirement schedule.

When I retired from IBM I wondered how I was going to fill my days. I knew I was going to play tennis five or six days a week, but that would only account for two to three hours each day.

I had always been interested in cooking so I thought it would be a good idea to take a course that would allow me to pursue a second career as a chef. Moving to Chapel Hill I met some wonderful people who introduced me to some fellow tennis players who told me about a program called DILR (Duke Institute of Learning for Retirees). I called its office and received a brochure that changed my life forever.

Going through the brochure, I found courses that covered subjects that I was familiar with and courses I knew very little about which really interested me. For example, I had read Shakespeare in high school, but did not really understand what I was reading. Living in New York City, I visited museums quite often, admiring much of the art I saw, but little understood.

I read the New York Times daily, but my knowledge of the first and second World Wars was sketchy at best, so you can understand my excitement when I enrolled in courses taught by professional teachers, covering these three subjects.

I took a course on King Lear taught by a professor who had just retired from Duke. It was like taking a cooking course where all the food you prepared was delicious, and the dessert was a flaming Cherries Jubilee.

The course on World War I was taught by Joe Cadell, who teaches at N C State and is recognized as one of the most knowledgeable and admired teachers in DILR. His classes are always over-subscribed, as students keep signing up for his courses year after year. How could you not like a course where you are learning about the lives of such world-famous painters as Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Degas. My interest and love of art sky-rocketed after learning about these and other world-renowned artists.

Since then I have taken courses on such varied subjects as Humor, U. S. Intelligence, The Civil War, Music of the 30’s and 40’s, and dozens of others. DILR ,which is now called OLLI, has enriched my life and allowed me to discuss subjects with a liberating degree of confidence and knowledge. Additionally, I got to meet interesting and well-educated people that I would probably have never had the opportunity to interact with.

If you want to keep your mind active and enjoy learning about new and different things I can’t think of a better place to do this then at OLLI.

OLLI at UNC-Asheville

The 2014 Southern Regional Lifelong Learning Meeting, sponsored by OLLI at UNC-Asheville, will explore senior programs in other communities to gain new perspectives. For information, write to OLLI at UNC-Asheville, One University Hts., CPO 500, Asheville, NC 28804, or email OLLI2014@unca.edu.