Lifelong Learning with Steve Thaxton

Michelle: Each show we address a different aspect of these questions. And today we’re going to take a look at an exciting way to use time in retirement. In the past, people did not live long past their retirement and the time they had left was thought of as the do nothing years, but with medical breakthroughs and more healthy lifestyles.

Michelle: All of that is changing. People are living well into their 80s and 90s and even older than 100. And what to do next after leaving the workaday world is a new and unexplored frontier. One thing many retirees are doing is putting return to school on their to do lists. Bernard Oshar is one guy who felt very strongly about the merit of learning just for the joy of it after the age of 50.

Michelle: So much so that he started a foundation that established 125 OSHER Lifelong Learning Institutes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each is associated with a local college or university. OLLI, as it is called, is an opportunity to take classes on everything from technology and political science, history, health and wellbeing, and armchair travel, as well as a new interests in foreign languages and photography, writing, you name it, they have it.

Michelle: Today we have as our guest, Steve Thaxton, who is the executive director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Nationwide. He is going to tell us all we have to know about how we can hook up with Osher Lifelong Learnings and learn, learn, learn. So welcome, Steve. How are you?

Steve Thaxton: I am well. Thank you, Michelle.

Steve Thaxton: It’s fun to be with you.

Michelle: Good. Can, can you tell us who Bernard Osher is? Why did he launch Osher Lifelong Learning?

Steve Thaxton: Well, Mr. Osher grew up in the state of Maine. And he and his sister went into the banking world. They, along with his brother in law, bought a single unit savings and loan in the San Francisco Bay Area, which ultimately became the second largest savings and loan in America, and then was sold to Wachovia.

Steve Thaxton: In the 1970s, Mr. Osher started to accumulate some serious wealth, and he began his foundation. One of the ideas that he had was to fund something that he saw modeled at a university in San Francisco, where he and Mrs. Osher live. And that is an institute that is not an Osher Institute, but was pre existing.

Steve Thaxton: It’s called the Fromm Institute. It is at the University of California, San Francisco, and that institute was the model for an idea that he felt could be scaled up across the country, which is exactly what he did. Over the ensuing years in forming a model and then partial funding for each one of these institutes to encourage their growth.

Michelle: What was his passion? What brought about his passion in lifelong learning for adults?

Steve Thaxton: You know, I think probably his Jewish heritage had a lot to do with it. That core value of lifelong learning and spreading learning among and with your friends and relatives was key to him. And particularly as he grew older and he saw the need for programming for people that were in retirement.

Steve Thaxton: From the early days, he said, everybody needs a reason to get up, get out of the house, and get together with people. So that was a big part of this. But also that core curiosity, and let me tell you, at 96, Barney Osher is the poster child of lifelong learning. He continues to learn well into his 90s. He’s an avid learner took up the piano in his 80s, took up surfing in, in his 80s, and a lot of other passions.

Steve Thaxton: He’s just really curious about the world.

Michelle: So the more you learn, the more you live, it sounds like.

Steve Thaxton: I think it’s working really well for him. There’s actually

Michelle: studies, I think, that, yeah. Well, everybody has to get out there and, uh, sign on for some classes. How do people do that? Uh, how do you find out where your local lifelong learning is and how, what is the enrollment procedure?

Steve Thaxton: Well, it’s a little bit different at each of the 125 universities and colleges. So what I recommend to folks who are not familiar with one already in their community is to go to our website, which is OSHER. net. O S H E R dot net and up at the top of that website, there’s a little line that you’ll see that says find an OSHER institute near you.

Steve Thaxton: If you click on it, you see a big map of the United States and you find yourself in there. Hopefully there is an institute very near you and you can click on that individual institute’s website and get details on that OLLI. Now remember, there’s only 125 of these. And even though there’s 125, we’re serving about 275 towns and cities because many universities and colleges have multiple satellite locations.

Steve Thaxton: So, that’s a pretty good spread across the country, however, not every university and college has an OSHER Institute. Yeah,

Michelle: go ahead.

Steve Thaxton: And in not having it, those institutes, well, yeah, and our, our network is built out. There, there will be 125 and that’s all. So, that, that is done.

Michelle: However, Okay.

Steve Thaxton: However, there are, by our count, about 400 of these types of institutes at universities and colleges that go beyond just those that are in our network.

Steve Thaxton: So it’s worthwhile to take a look at the local college or university that is in your town and find out from them if they have an institute that is not affiliated with OSHER, if they don’t. But they’re still running a program.

Michelle: When you sign up for a class, do you sign up per class or do you sign up for a semester or a year? Is there a kind of a subscription membership? How is the how much does it cost? Tell us a little bit about the procedure for signing on.

Steve Thaxton: Well, my line that I use every single day is to know one Ali. is to know one OLLI.

Steve Thaxton: Each one is independent, and it calls on the assets of its own community, and it prices individually. But I can tell you that most OLLIs have a nominal membership fee, and then they have per course prices. And the prices vary widely, from smaller towns to the bigger cities, from major universities to small community colleges.

Steve Thaxton: It’s a little different everywhere, but Generally, if you’re a member and you take courses every term that they’re offered, maybe two or three, you’re probably looking at in the range of two to four hundred dollars a year in total, which if you think about the number of courses and the number of hours that you’d be spending, that’s a pretty smokin deal.

Michelle: Yeah, and it’s a, it’s a great way to not only learn, but to meet people. And meeting people and making connections is, fares well in your, as you age, as well as the learning aspect of it. So, I like the idea.

Steve Thaxton: You know, lately we’ve become very sensitized to the detrimental effects of loneliness and social isolation.

Steve Thaxton: And, these, these institutes have been going for about 20, 22 years. But you start to realize that those folks who have been involved for many years, they’ve aged and they’ve become very late in life and they’re still, they’re still very much engaged. There’s probably a reason for that. It’s that socialization and that constant exercising of your brain combined that It’s a little bit of a fountain of youth.

Michelle: But do some of the classes occur online and is that done on a national basis or is it broadcast by the local school?

Steve Thaxton: Well, it’s a little bit of both. Each of the institutes have online offerings as well as in person offerings. Now, it was interesting, before the pandemic, there were very few that were offering online.

Steve Thaxton: But during the pandemic, by necessity, we had to deliver classes and keep people engaged online. And so with two years of practice and a lot of training, people came away from the pandemic saying, Hey, we want both in person and online choices. So the institutes are all working in that way. And then there’s a smaller group that work with us on a national basis.

Steve Thaxton: And we provide supplemental added classes for them to market locally if they’d like us to do so. So it’s opt in for them and those are classes that we create and present out of Chicago at the national office and then they market those individually. As they see fit in their own time zones within their own memberships.

Michelle: So if you’re not a member of the local school, if there, if there’s not a local school in your area, can you still go online and participate in an online class or do you have to be tethered to a local school?

Steve Thaxton: Yes, the latter, Michelle. You do have to be a member of an Osher Institute to partake in, in this, and, and while that’s a bit of an exclusive I guess hurdle, there’s no reason that you couldn’t join an Osher Institute in a town that’s far away from you and then just partake in the online offerings if you’d like.

Michelle: Yeah, that’s wonderful. What kind of courses can I anticipate I’ll find in a catalog at Osher Lifelong Learning?

Steve Thaxton: Oh my goodness, you wouldn’t believe the variety. It’s, it’s a little like a small liberal arts college. In that there’s things that are offered that are just all over the board. The arts, the sciences, some, some things that are very academic.

Steve Thaxton: Some things that are very experiential. You might, uh, you might take a course in an introduction to the game of bridge, or a course on the introduction to artificial intelligence, or gene splicing, or the history of the Reformation, or Shakespeare, or detective fiction. You, you can really see it all. So if you kind of imagine all the electives in college that you maybe didn’t have the time to take, but they sounded interesting, all of those kinds of things are offered at universities across the country at Osher Institutes.

Michelle: That’s wonderful. It’s, um, and it, it relies on the local talent near the university or at the university where the classes are taking place. I take it.

Steve Thaxton: Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, for the most part, the local institutes are recruiting instructors from that campus community. So there may be emeritus faculty or active faculty that are experts in certain areas.

Steve Thaxton: Um, that’s a great pool at every one of the universities and colleges because you’ve got specialists and some outstanding instructors that you can learn from. But in this new era of Zoom, They can also recruit from across the country or across the globe.

Michelle: Yeah.

Steve Thaxton: So there’s opportunities to bring in people who maybe would never be in their community, but have a great interest and a great skill to share.

Michelle: You know, the pandemic and Zoom has really changed us. What about travel opportunities? Does OLLI sponsor travel opportunities as well? And can people outside of the membership participate in any of those kinds of programs?

Steve Thaxton: Yeah, it’s, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. Prior to the pandemic, I would say about 75 percent of the OLLIs had travel programs of some sort.

Steve Thaxton: And of course, with the pandemic, that all was suspended. As of last year, it’s back up to probably about 60 percent that are offering travel. And that’s a combination of day trips in the city or region that they’re in, domestic overnight trips, and even international trips as well. And most of the OLLIs do indeed accept people who are not within their membership to come in and, and get acquainted with that.

Steve Thaxton: That group of people in the community that is OLLI. So, I would say it’s well worth investigating in the local OLLI near anyone if they’re interested in travel. Sometimes that travel is associated with classes. There, there are certain universities that will say, Hey, this year we’re studying deeply the culture, the politics, the history of, name a country.

Steve Thaxton: And then they’ll cap it off with a trip to that country to experience it very deeply.

Michelle: Wow, that’s exciting. Are they, uh, reasonably priced? Is that an expensive do you offer scholarships if it is?

Steve Thaxton: Well, on the travel, it’s roughly equivalent to what you might see in any other group travel program. So if you’re used to or if you’ve experienced, Some of the travel that AAA does or Road Scholar it’s generally in the neighborhood of prices that are equivalent to those organizations.

Steve Thaxton: And in fact, OLLI sometimes will partner, partner with Road Scholar or Colette Travel to present and then they tailor it with their faculty and, and the kinds of things educationally that they’re doing. As it relates to travel, there are very few of the institutes that offer scholarship on travel, but nearly every one of the OSHA institutes has some kind of tuition assistance or scholarship program for folks who are in tough economic shape and don’t have disposable income to be able to do that themselves.

Michelle: Isn’t that great? That’s, that’s really, really wonderful. There’s everything about Bernard Osher and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute that’s from the heart and generous and really not only an opportunity to learn, but an opportunity to explore, which are all great ways to spend your time in retirement.

Michelle: What about special events? Are there any kind of special events associated with these schools?

Steve Thaxton: Yeah, it’s very typical that an OSHER Institute will be well tied in and collaborate with all kinds of events that are happening on campus. So those may be sporting events, in some cases collegiate athletics theater, music.

Steve Thaxton: It really works well to have that OLLI population be involved and engaged with those programs at the university. And, Sometimes that includes discounts on tickets and group events that go around it. And then of course, there’s a lot of social opportunities within the OLLI membership community throughout the year.

Steve Thaxton: They do parties and events to celebrate anniversaries and, and special occasions with their volunteers and with their members very regularly.

Michelle: That’s fantastic. What, what are We’re going to do a whole show on volunteering at OLLI, because that’s another aspect of the programs, which I love so much, but let’s take a moment to, so let’s take a moment to just explain what volunteering opportunities there are at OLLI, and then on another show, we’ll get more deeply into that.

Michelle: But can you tip a hat to that on this program?

Steve Thaxton: I sure can. Within the OLLI membership, we’ve got approximately 15 percent of the membership in total in active volunteer roles. And at our last count, it was just under 20, 000 people across the network who were volunteering. And they volunteer in a variety of different roles.

Steve Thaxton: There’s generally an advisory committee, It helps guide the university in developing curriculum and the kinds of topics and guests that the membership is interested in. And then that typically will splinter into a variety of committees. There might be a committee that’s dealing with special events and social opportunities.

Steve Thaxton: Another that’s working on growing the membership overall. There might be a fundraising group that’s working to raise money for scholarships or for any project that particular OLLI has. And then of course, many OLLIs run on full volunteer instructors. And that typically is emeritus faculty, retired folks who are experts in various subjects, even people who are just leading discussion groups.

Steve Thaxton: And They take it upon themselves to learn a lot about it to be able to run a discussion group. But there’s other roles too. Some of the kind of basic volunteer things of helping set up at an event or maybe working on data entry or customer service at a welcome desk, um, speakers bureaus. And, and in these days, a lot of folks who are, are technical ambassadors, so they may be moderators or facilitators within the realm of Zoom to make it easier for folks who don’t have great expertise in online.

Michelle: It’s, it’s really, um, all the way around whether you’re volunteering or you’re going to learn. It’s a place to check into whether or not that’s, uh, in your area or not. And if it’s not in your area to check into a universities and that’s near you and see what kind of continuing education programs there, there are.

Michelle: I want to thank you, Steve, for telling us more about this fantastic resource. What’s the website again? So if somebody wants to look up what, where they can participate, can you shout that out?

Steve Thaxton: You bet it’s Osher. net. Okay.

Michelle: So, uh, ladies and gentlemen, and if you’re out there looking for a way to learn, check it out.

Michelle: OSHER lifelong learning classes. Uh, you can become a member, you can volunteer, you can do both, you can do lots of things over at OSHER. So get out, get going and learn something today. Thank you so much, Steve. We appreciate you coming.

Steve Thaxton: Thank you, Michelle. It’s been fun.