Skip to main content

Never Stop Learning

OLLI provides an educational second wind to retirees

George Baroff makes a point during discussing in the "Describe Your God" class.

There are no exams, no grades, no roll call. Nobody has to go to class. But at the Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning (OLLI), there is no shortage of students in the seats, eagerly absorbing information about subjects from Sephardic literature to the Human Genome Project.

 

The majority of OLLI learners are retirees, looking to catch their educational second wind. For a nominal membership fee, adults can join campus life, registering for courses that touch on local Durham history, computer languages or bellydancing.

 

"One part of our program is try new things as you get older," says OLLI director Catherine Frank. "Another part is staying active, whether it's keep your mind active, or your body active. It's all carrots and no sticks, so that makes for a great learning environment."

 

"It's a godsend," says A. Wendell Musser, a physician and former professor at Duke School of Medicine. Musser returned to Durham after retirement and cared for his wife during her final illness, and he still remembers the moment she passed away in his arms.

 

OLLI's April Calendar

Itching to learn more about the Apollo space program? Want Italian cooking tips? Have you never read Lolita, but feel now's the time? These are just a few of the OLLI classes being offered April-May. Click here for schedule.

"She died July 23rd, 9:40 p.m., 2003. After that, my world ended. I was lost and kind of richocheting around," he says. "Shortly after that I found OLLI."

 

Many who experience the loss of a spouse or a lifestyle change find more than just stimulating discussion at OLLI.

 

"You find a lot of friendship here. Our picnics are like big family reunions," Musser says. OLLI also organizes social activities for members, including bridge clubs, wine tastings and concerts. Some OLLI members will travel to South Africa in May.

 

Frank credits Sara Craven, her predecessor, with the program's tremendous growth.

 

Since its founding 30 years ago, OLLI enrollment has grown from about 200 people to its current size of more than 1,400 members. Formerly known as DILR, Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement, the program changed its name in 2004 when it received grants from the California-based Bernard Osher Foundation.

 

Now with a $2 million endowment, OLLI at Duke joins a network of similar institutes around the country. It is one of the five top-funded Osher institutes in the country.

 

"Really, it's as if the support fell into our laps in some ways," says Frank. "But it's also because of 30 years of really wonderful work by so many people that we received this grant."

 

bellydancing

OLLI students keep active in a bellydancing class at Croasdaile Village. Photo: Jon Gardner

Housed in The Bishop's House in the northeast corner of Duke's East Campus, the program is a draw for retirees relocating to this area.

 

"Every week somebody comes by my office and says, ‘This is one of the reasons I moved here, and one of the reasons I want to stay,'" Frank says. "We feel Duke is in a great position to really capitalize on the idea that the baby boomers are here."

 

For $30 an academic year, members can participate in OLLI activities. Some activities, and most classes, also have a fee. Although members once were required to be older than 50, there is no longer an age requirement. The next session begins at the end of April and goes until the beginning of June; for a catalog, click here.

About half the classes are taught by other OLLI members, often in a field unrelated to their former career. Musser, an avid book collector, now lectures on history -- one of his longtime passions.

 

"I'm just an old retired doc that loves to fill up his house with books," says Musser, who has more than 600 volumes on Winston Churchill. "I've never had such an exhilarating experience of teaching in the years I did it for money to pay the rent, because these people really want to be here. They are energetic and interested. Sometimes they kind of break your heart because they applaud. I never had a class applaud me before!"

 

For Ann Evangelisto, OLLI opened the door to "another life." Among the courses she has taken are "Bach and Beethoven" and "The History of the Requiem" with Duke music faculty. Now she's enjoying a course on post-1950 Italian films.

 

Evangelisto took up teaching again at OLLI because it gave her more freedom than she had as a high school English teacher. Now, her love is digging up international writers to introduce to fellow OLLI members.

 

"That's the good thing about OLLI — doing courses that I've dreamed about teaching in high school and never could," she says.

 

Whenever she's traveling abroad, she asks local bookstore owners for new authors. "The locals, they always know who the best writers are, the way they know the restaurants," she says. Her next course will be on Arabic short stories.

 

That kind of zeal for learning for learning's sake is exemplified at OLLI, Frank says.

 

"In many ways it's like the purest form of what university learning means," she says. "People don't come here to get a degree, to earn more money or because they think they're going to advance their career. It's really learning for the love of it."