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Gaining knowledge — and friends OLLI members Irv Lubliner, Jackie Bachman, Margaret Pashko, Cory Ross and Jack Seybold serve as cheerleaders at an OLLI social event. Photo by Scott Murphy Monday Dec 5, 2016 at 4:30 PM Dec 5, 2016 at 4:30 PM By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Lesley Kaufman and her husband were in the middle of an extended spring visit here when she decided to take a class at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute led by Bruce Barnes titled “Hot News/Cool Views.” The class works like this: serving as moderator, Barnes forwards to his 23 students selected news articles that serve as topics of discussion during their 90-minute class, which meets once a week. A 71-year-old retired medical insurance salesperson, Kaufman’s goal was to learn as much about the community as possible before moving here. Five OLLI terms later, the Kaufmans’ roots in Ashland already run deep after completing their move from Tucson, Arizona, a year ago. “My objective was to expose myself to all this lush culture around here,” said Kaufman, who has since signed up for French film and improv classes. “We lived in a community in Tucson where we had to drive quite a distance, over an hour, to get to culture. I was raised in the Boston area and always was exposed to all kinds of cultural events since I was a little girl, and I missed that terribly. That was one of the reasons we moved to Ashland, because we could get this wonderful array of culture here and be around very educated people.” Printed on the front of the OLLI winter 2017 course catalog is its credo, “Come for the Classes … Stay for the Connections,” and Kaufman says it’s proven to true. “It works two ways,” she said. “I meet people at OLLI, and then I find that I meet them elsewhere, and it seems like all the people I gravitate to are people interested in learning, interested in the same cultural experiences I am interested in. And they’re enjoying life. OLLI is a great place to start meeting people and building friendships.” Founded in 1993 as Southern Oregon Learning In Retirement, or SOLIR, the Southern Oregon University-affiliated adult education program geared to people 50 and older has come a long way since its humble 100-member beginning, thanks in part to two $100,000 donations and two $1 million endowments, courtesy of the Bernard Osher Foundation. The first of those grants, awarded in 2007, prompted the name change and a community outreach effort that led to a surge in membership, from about 600 in 2006 to 1,655 as of Wednesday. The low membership fee and robust course offerings, which include more than 100 classes in each of the three terms September through June, make OLLI an easy sell. “I think it’s because the financial infusion helped quite a bit,” OLLI council member Margaret Pashko said of the membership spike. “That in turn attracted more instructors and more people, and now this upcoming winter term we’ve got 111 courses. We had 117 in the fall, and we’ll probably have another 100-plus in the spring.” For $125 per academic year, students can sign up for as many classes as they wish. Most of the classes are held at the Campbell Center in Ashland and the Higher Education Center in Medford, but some are held elsewhere if the instructor chooses. Membership fees cover roughly half of OLLI’s operating costs. The Osher Foundation and fundraising efforts by OLLI’s local volunteers make up the rest (SOU’s OLLI branch has 2.5 full-time employees staffing offices in Ashland and Medford, Pashko said). And count the instructors themselves as volunteers, because none are paid. How does the OLLI outreach team convince instructors, many of whom are former professors and/or experts in their field, to donate their time? It’s not as difficult as it may seem, explained Pashko. For one, most of the instructors are members themselves who have benefited from OLLI and want to give back. For another, as OLLI advertises prominently on its website, classes do not include tests or grades. “It’s a combination of outreach as well as people who just continue to teach most terms because they like it, and they can develop their schedule around their own personal schedule,” Pashko said. “They’re very accomplished professionals. We always call them 'formerly important people' — FIPs.” Take Irv Lubliner. It’s one thing to teach harmonica chords to a small group of retirees in a stale classroom flushed in ambient light, and it’s another to emerge from the shadows at a throbbing club in London, whip out the old harp and play the blues. Lubliner’s done both, but some of the students in his Beginning Blues Harmonica class may not know that he also spent 40 years as an accomplished math teacher — 30 years in the Bay Area — before arriving at SOU, where he was given emeritus professor status before retiring two years ago. Lubliner says he took a few months off after retiring before offering his services to OLLI and is glad he did. It was a perfect fit, he said, because it allowed him to enjoy everything he loves about teaching and ditch the parts of the profession he’s content to live without, namely grading papers and evaluating students. “For so many of them,” Lubliner said, “it was just about, ‘What can I do to pass the class?' and 'What can I do to earn a certain grade?’ And after 40 years of putting marks on papers, I was tired of that. I wasn’t tired of teaching whatsoever — I love teaching, I love being up in front of a group of people or walking around as they work on something and I step in and help them. I love that interaction, whether it’s young people or older people.” “If people have a young enough spirit at age 50 to want to play blues harmonica, then they are just little kids in grown-up bodies. It’s all the same.” Susan Stitham, who’s on OLLI’s curriculum committee, says that sort of mentality is what makes OLLI a success. “I think the key thing is the instructors are so enthusiastic,” she said. “It’s not a job. These people chose to do this because they love the teaching, and they love to share what they know.” George Rice agrees. The 81-year-old Applegate resident has taken OLLI classes every year since he and his wife decided to join after seeing an ad in the newspaper eight years ago. Rice has particularly enjoyed California State emeritus professor Marc Ratner’s classes on literature, but he’s also taken classes in economics, finance, banking, science and language. “You come away learning a lot,” he said. “Most everyone at OLLI are taking classes in areas that they already have a background in. So this is a chance to go a little bit deeper, to spend a little more time on a subject. When you’re working and raising a family and involved in the busy part of life, you don’t have time to sit back and enjoy something just for the sake of what it is.” — Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99.