Recent studies have indicated that intellectual and social engagement are vital to the health and well-being of older adults. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the Urbana campus, which recently celebrated its first anniversary of offering enrichment programs, is fulfilling those needs for hundreds of people in Central Illinois.
OLLI is a member of a growing national network of 121 enrichment programs on university and college campuses. OLLI programs are funded by renewable grants of up to four years from the Bernard Osher Foundation, named for its founder, philanthropist Bernard Osher, who created the initiative to improve people’s quality of life through support for higher education and the arts. The grants provide support to institutions of higher education to develop and strengthen initiatives that offer intellectually stimulating, non-credit courses specifically designed for students over age 50.
Courses offered at Urbana this year have included poetry, African-American sacred music, Taiji (Tai Chi) and a course on brain function and brain health, which was co-taught by eight UI faculty members. The course schedule for this fall is just as challenging and far-ranging, and includes courses on physics, politics and presidential elections, Beethoven and the intersection of music with the rise of middle-class society, and another class in its popular series, this time focusing on American Westerns.
“Before classes started last fall, I had no idea how it would feel to have this kind of a program – what benefit it would provide,” said Kathleen Holden, director of the institute. “After the first two weeks, it was clear to me that this was a program that was meeting a need not present in the community. It’s not just coming to class and then leaving as you would in a traditional classroom or older adult learning program. This is more like an adult college, where the people socialize. They’re getting to know one another, making new connections.”
Anna Merritt, of Urbana, the first president of OLLI’s board of directors, is one of the members whose lives have been enriched by her involvement in its programs. Prior to OLLI’s founding at the Urbana campus, Merritt and Holden were part of a group of friends who met every month for lunch. And transitions in their lives during 2006, including retirement, left each looking for new purpose and connections.
“I was used to being active and doing things, and I thought my life was over. One day Kathleen came to our lunch meeting and said, ‘I think I have an answer to our question on our life issue,’ ” Merritt said. The Urbana campus was planning to implement an OLLI program, and Chancellor Richard Herman had asked Holden to be OLLI’s first director.
“And she started talking about OLLI, and I said, ‘Yes, this is what I’d like to do.’ This first year has been extraordinary,” Merritt said. “It’s been a lifesaver.”
“It’s been a lifesaver for many people,” Holden said. “I’ve had people come to my door, and say, ‘This program has changed my life.’ ”
For Merritt, “It was an affirmation that I could still be active. I could still create things, be involved in a meaningful way. I wanted to do something really useful. Because of OLLI, I don’t have that feeling that life is over anymore. In different ways, OLLI has done that for an awful lot of people.”
Unlike traditional programs for older adults, where the programs’ providers make decisions about content and delivery, OLLI’s members, through the curriculum committee, determine the curricula. In addition to courses on various topics, OLLI also offers free lunchtime lectures and peer-led study groups. Members are considering the possibility of offering a travel program along with learning opportunities about the destinations.
“I took a poetry course that I must admit scared the living daylights out of me,” Merritt said. “I hadn’t read any poetry since I was in college, but I decided that’s what OLLI is about. It’s supposed to challenge you. And I can’t tell you how that course affected me. I’d be driving down the street and lines of poetry would start going through my brain. It was bizarre, but also very exciting.”
OLLI’s students engage with the instructors and are excited about the opportunities to learn new things, providing a novel type of teaching experience for current and retired faculty members. “They’re well informed, they ask good questions, they bring life experience to the classroom, and they aren’t required to be there,” Holden said. “I’ve noticed in almost all the classes, people are taking notes. Learning is really important to them.”
OLLI’s $100,000 grant from the Osher Foundation was recently renewed for a third year. OLLI at Illinois currently has 350 members and the program’s leaders have set short-term goals of increasing membership to 400 by January and to 500 by summer 2009. If those membership goals are reached, the program would become eligible to receive a $1 million endowment from the Osher Foundation.
The OLLI program resides in the Research Park but is expected to relocate to the south campus as an integral component of a diverse, intergenerational living and learning community at Orchard Downs when the student housing complex on that site is redesigned and renovated within the next few years.
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