Alison Taylor strides through AU’s Spring Valley Building on an overcast October afternoon, rolling backpack in tow, and settles into a fifth-floor classroom abuzz with student chatter. She places a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace—the underlined passages and margin notes expressions of her enthusiasm—on the desk and waits for the instructor to launch into her lecture.
It may sound like a typical college survey of Russian literature, but Taylor, 81, and her classmates—among the 1,600 members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), which this year marks its 40th anniversary at AU—are anything but typical students. Members, who must be at least 50 and average 75 years of age, bring decades of knowledge and experience to the classroom. And they have as much to teach as to learn.
“Can you see how much fun I’m having?” Taylor says with a laugh after peppering the instructor, Leslie Frantz, with questions about the language in the thousand-page opus. “It’s wonderful to be among people who are still so intellectually engaged.”
A former English teacher at Georgetown Day School, Taylor—eager to keep her mind sharp and her social circle wide—joined OLLI two years after retiring in 2007. She’s enrolled in courses every year since. “For me, the great pleasure is reading the books because, boy, do I love to read,” she says.
“Many of the students were doctors or lawyers” or engineers, like 88-year-old David Winer, “and they didn’t have time to read the classics,” says Frantz, who’s led OLLI study groups for 18 years. “Now they have time, and they’re catching up on a different kind of education—a liberal arts education.”
OLLI at AU is an independent, nonprofit organization affiliated with a national network that includes 125 programs on college and university campuses across all 50 states and the District. DC’s institute boasts a catalog that’s intellectually rigorous, with about 250 classes between the spring and fall semesters.
Selections include The Ups and Downs of Weather; Star-Crossed: Tragic Tales of Love from Around the World; Science Perverted: Eugenics and Racial Hygiene; Opera as Politics; and longtime favorite Off the Beaten Path in the DC Area, taught by Ralph Buglass. There’s even a nine-week class devoted to reading the New Yorker.
Lori Chapman, 55, learned about the program from a friend in her book club; this semester she’s diving into two classes, Understanding Asia and Today’s Supreme Court: A Course for Citizens.
“My father has taken OLLI classes at [another institution] and AU offers more courses that are far more diverse and interesting,” she says. “Also, the students bring a lot to the table through their own experiences and expertise.”
“Everyone is here because they [want] to be,” says Tina Fried Heller, SPA/MPA ’80, who founded OLLI at AU. “When school started, our kids would go ‘ugh,’ but [when it was our turn], we couldn’t wait for school to start.”
In 1980, Fried Heller and a group of friends were interested in taking college-level classes to feed their intellectual curiosity. They created a proposal for a volunteer membership organization that offered thought-provoking, peer-led study groups, encouraged a sense of community, and fostered opportunities for retirement-aged Washingtonians to make new friends. At the time, only three such organizations existed across the entire country.
After Fried Heller’s group met with AU leadership, they were assigned space in Nebraska Hall and a dean with whom to work. The Institute for Learning in Retirement (LIR) launched in fall 1982 with 80 members and 11 peer-led study groups.
In 2006, LIR joined the San Francisco-based Osher Foundation’s growing national network of university-affiliated institutes. The partnership has since garnered million-dollar endowments after AU’s program surpassed 500 members and secured a long-term lease at the Spring Valley Building in 2016.
“The university gave us the classroom and office space we needed to move our entire program under one roof,” says Tony Long, executive director of OLLI at AU. “That was life changing for us.”
Participation in continuing education programs like OLLI “may help sustain older adults’ psychological wellbeing,” by promoting autonomy and fulfillment in their everyday lives, according to a 2016 study by the National Institutes of Health. Lifelong learning is also a cornerstone of AU’s mission.
“One of my favorite things about being part of the university community is that it is my job to cultivate curiosity—and I’m committed to [doing that] at all levels,” said AU president Sylvia Burwell during OLLI’s 40th anniversary celebration on October 25. “From our undergraduate programs to our OLLI programs, we are empowering students to live lives of purpose, service, and leadership; to stay curious; and to be lifelong learners.”
Taylor and her classmates may have retired, but their curiosity never will.