The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke will offer more than 120 courses during the winter semester beginning on Jan. 5, including new evening offerings. Registration opens on Dec. 9.
The new term will feature two evening classes -- “Genealogy I, For the Novice & Beyond” and “Druids, Saints & Riverdance: An Introduction to Early Celtic Culture” -- at the Bishop’s House, a first for the 37-year-old learning community.
“One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from Duke employees is whether OLLI at Duke offers evening classes,” says director Garry Crites. “People have heard of the program and are interested in joining, but they work during the day. We decided that it was time to serve that population.”
Each of the new “OLLI at Night” courses will be offered at a discounted rate. New participants can purchase an annual OLLI membership and enroll in a course at the same cost that they would typically pay for the course alone.
OLLI at Duke's other winter offerings range from “Creativity & Genius in the Arts,” to “Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” to “Sex Education for the Senior Citizen: Aging Sexuality Is Not an Oxymoron.” For the full list of January-March courses, click here.
OLLI is part of a national network of more than 119 campus-based chapters. Volunteer instructors share their expertise and passions in courses without tests, papers or grades. The classroom environment is casual and relaxed.
Lois Pounds Oliver, head docent of Duke Chapel, will teach “Building Duke Chapel,” giving OLLI members an opportunity to see the chapel up close before it is closed beginning in May for a year of restoration. Oliver, a Duke professor emerita of pediatrics, plans to highlight the history of the chapel and its Gothic artistry. One session will be devoted to the four chapel organs, and the last class will be in the chapel itself, showing parts of the building tourists do not see.
Learn about the “personalities of numbers” from Don Chesnut, who taught chemistry at Duke for 35 years. The 10-session course, looking at a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers, is titled “An Introduction to Number Theory: Numbers Can Be Interesting. No, Really!”
“Primate and Human Evolution: Origination and Extinction” will be taught by Duke paleontologist Gregg Gunnell and Douglas Boyer, an assistant professor in Duke’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. Gunnell leads a collection of more than 24,000 fossils, many of which provide clues on primate evolution. The class will meet in the collection room of the Division of Fossil Primates, which holds specimens collected over decades from three continents. The class, last offered in the spring, was featured in a Duke Lemur Center article.
Mark Rutledge, the United Church of Christ campus minister on Duke’s Religious Life staff, will teach “Progressive Religion: A Way Between Traditional Christianity and Atheism.” A popular teacher of OLLI religion courses, Rutledge's new class will explore the new progressivism movement, which honors past traditions while forging ways of connecting faith and reason.
The Croasdaile Village Symposia, a series of 2 p.m. Tuesday afternoon talks continues this winter. Among the expert speakers will be Duke Molecular Physiology Institute research fellow David Bartlett on March 10, discussing how physical activity can modulate immune function and systemic inflammation in the elderly. Dr. Philip Rosoff, chair of the Duke Hospital Ethics Committee, will speak on March 24 about ways to design our health care system to incorporate acceptable forms of rationing.
Popular OLLI instructor Dr. Wendell Musser is teaching a course this term on legendary radio and TV journalist Edward R. Murrow. Musser, a retired academic physician, says Murrow remains the standard by which today’s journalists measure themselves.
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 nearly 1,800 members in the Triangle.
For more information about OLLI course offerings, go to http://www.learnmore.duke.edu/olli/.