The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

Minnock, in February 2000, suggested that the university create a lifelong-learning center to provide study opportunities to regional citizens older than 50. By October, an organizational committee was setting up the Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR). Saginaw, Bay City and Midland community foundations each had provided $10,000 grants to help with the launch. Following Minnock’s departure from SVSU, Jo Brownlie assumed direction of the ILR. In September 2001, the ILR fall kick-off event attracted 205 applications for membership.18 Then, in July 2005, the institute received a $1 million grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation. With that, it became the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute—a freestanding entity within the Center for Business & Economic Development. Osher Foundation officials, pleased with OLLI’s work, awarded a second $1 million to SVSU in July 2007.

In its first decade, ILR/OLLI grew to 1,416 members from the original 205, an increase of 518 percent. The number of class registrations increased 350 percent, from 766 to 2,955. Off-campus trips, domestic and international, were a popular OLLI attraction. By 20012002, members had participated in 26 such journeys.19 Members formed special interest groups as OLLI matured, satisfying such common interests as bridge, ceramics, bicycling and Buddhist psychology.

In 2013, Brownlie was continuing to serve as director of OLLI.

In 2005, SVSU received a $1 million grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation to fund its lifelong-learning center for regional citizens older than age 50. The institute has had great success, resulting in an additional grant of $1 million issued two years later.