First, we shoveled out our driveways, then we assembled at Heritage Heights to hear about the spring term courses being offered by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Granite State College. As people stamped the snow off their boots, they were greeted by the sight of spring flowers (artificial) and sunny smiles (real) of volunteers waiting to register them and hand out the long-awaited spring catalog.
OLLI is a volunteer-driven program known for its wide variety of high quality, cost-effective, noncredit courses designed for engaged adults age 50 and over.
On Monday at 9 a.m. most of the 1,380 OLLI members will rev up their computers and tablets to register for their favorites among the 249 courses being offered between mid-February and mid-June. The online registration system is an objective judge of who will secure a seat in their most desired courses. Each course has a maximum capacity derived from classroom capacity and presenter preference and the first members up to that number who complete their online purchase score the coveted seats.
OLLI Curriculum Committee volunteers have become adept at forecasting sell-out courses and often offer multiple sections of the most popular during a single term as well as repeating sell-out courses term after term. Members who miss out are encouraged to put themselves on waitlists which are often resolved by increasing the size of the class, offering another section or enrolled members who find they cannot attend.
While it’s true that some 10% of the courses sell out on the first day of registration, that means the other 90% continue to have available seats. Registration for courses is open right up until the course begins, so, even if a member is locked out of one or two courses, there are lots of others from which to choose.
Nine courses will be offered in February, eight of them at the Concord campus of Granite State College on Hall Street. The very first course of the term is about Daniel Chester French, the New Hampshire-born sculptor known for the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. Following that are “Picking the President 2020,” “Hamilton: The Musical – Historically Accurate or Not?” “Minor Writers, Major Stories,” “Music Therapy for the Aging Brain,” “Lincoln and His Generals,” “Oratory of Daniel Webster” and a discussion of the book Where You’ll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Katie Matrosova with the book’s author. The one February class not offered onsite at the college will be Snowshoeing Through the Carter Hill Orchard which will be held at, well, Carter Hill Orchard.
The other 68 courses in Concord, as well as the 172 courses offered in Manchester, Portsmouth and Conway, are outlined in detail in the spring catalog and online at olli.granite.edu.
Additionally, members are invited Feb. 12 to “Mug ‘n’ Roll,” a soup/chili and bread lunch with a theme of New Hampshire Firsts (recognizing that the obvious one, held the day before, is not the only “first” our fair state can brag about).
Free activities enjoyed by members with similar interests are found in OLLI’s Special Interest Groups. Monthly guided hikes, sometimes on snowshoes, are held one Saturday a month. A book club meets monthly and a quilting club meets twice a month all year long while a garden group, like most of our gardens, is in hibernation for the winter.
OLLI welcomes new members and it’s an easy process to join. If you are at least 50 years old, simply stop in or call the OLLI office at 513-1377.