Bishop's House, home to hundreds of classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Prospective instructors in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Duke recently filled a Bishop’s House classroom to watch a short video and get a pep talk with veteran instructors.
They left the workshop ready to experience the pleasures of leading classes in which the students – OLLI members – contribute to the discussions. Sometimes, a student even turns out to be an international expert on the class topic.
“You have to be knowledgeable and prepared and organized,” said Mike Bahnaman, chair of OLLI’s instructor relations committee. “We have a pretty tough crowd that has high expectations. You can’t just wing it.”
Each year, OLLI welcomes about 60 first-time instructors among its active faculty of 300, said Bahnaman, who retired as a business development specialist for Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich., and moved to Durham.
“We have a pretty large and dynamic group of teachers,” he said. “Some are lifelong educators, but many come from other fields and we’re glad to have them.” One small trend in recent years: Retired physicians from an array of medical disciplines becoming OLLI history teachers.
The challenge of having 32 prospective instructors may be finding room for all the courses. “As it is, we basically beg, borrow and steal to find enough space” for more than 100 course offerings, Bahnaman said.
Phil Carl, who serves on the curriculum committee, said instructors are using a service known as Test Drive to post a short course description on the OLLI website and gauge prospective student interest in the topic.
“You can just never tell what will be popular,” Carl said, noting that “Relativity for Smarties” filled with more members on a waiting list. Carl thought a course being floated on Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler’s elegant equation (eiπ+1=0) might scare people away, but he later learned that 22 members expressed an interest on Test Drive.
Other science courses in the works include an agronomy course tied to Jared Diamond’s books and a cell biologist’s class on drug trials.
Carl, a former molecular biology professor, said the new website also gives OLLI members (only 17 percent of whom have taught classes) more confidence to float course ideas.
The curriculum committee is currently accepting proposals for the fall term, which runs from Sept. 12 through Dec. 2. The deadline for submitting proposals is May 13. OLLI Director Garry Crites said OLLI hopes to increase the number of Duke faculty and staff who teach at OLLI.
Virginia Knight, curriculum committee chair and a former Meredith College math professor, said instructors sometimes are inspired by their former careers, such as the New York/New Jersey three-airport system manager who taught a course about the modern international airport and the CIA case officer turned White House special assistant who taught a class about the foreign intelligence process. She says the catalog offerings mostly grow out of the passions of the members and not from the curriculum committee’s attempt to cover all the academic bases.
“There’s a real freedom (for instructors),” she said. “You’re not tied to any dictated course content.”
Knight said she hears from retirees who researched OLLI programs around the country before settling on the Triangle. “Our signature is a catalog of courses that are more in depth.”
Virginia Wilson, who advises on history and current events classes, said, “the fun part of working with the OLLI instructors is that they have had so many wonderful life experiences to incorporate in their courses. Instructors want to share their passions with others.”
Following the workshop, Richard Weintraub, a Durham city attorney, joined prospective literature instructors on the front porch of the Bishop’s House. He said he was impressed with course proposals focused on literature borne of suffering, the connections between art and literature and 20th century prequels playing off characters in classic novels.
“It’s gratifying in that I’m helping instructors offer courses that students want,” Weintraub says.
In addition to the classes, OLLI sponsors social events, guest speakers, short trips and a host of special interest groups, ranging from two book clubs and a photography group to the New Horizons Band and Chorus. OLLI at Duke serves more than 1,950 members in the Triangle.
For more information about OLLI at Duke course offerings, click here.