SU offers courses for adults who want to “learn for the sake of learning”

By Mary Beth Roach

Now that Bob Burchhardt is retired, and his wife, Diana, works part time, the Tully couple is focusing on the next phase of their lives and looking at what develops.

So they enrolled in a new photography class, “Seeing the Light,” offered through Syracuse University Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI), a program begun in 2008 by SU ’s Gerontology Center for students at least 50 years old that integrates classroom work with a community service final project.

With the theme of AGE and engAGEment, the institute is all about “learning for learning’s sake,” said Madonna Harrington Meyer, director of the institute.

For years, these students may have been building careers and raising families, so they may not have had the opportunity to pursue some of their interests, Meyer said.

“There’s always a road not taken,” she said. “These classes pick up old passions.” Studies show, Meyer said, that lifelong learning is good for physical health, social health and cognitive health.

“The Lifelong Learning Institute provides a forum for learning about topics of interest in an engaging and supportive way, both on our own and with others,” according to Susie Weiss, of Cazenovia, also enrolled in the photography class.

The classes also extend beyond the boundaries of the classroom, in that the students’ final project involves them in the community.

For example, students in a recent class about elections were involved in registering voters; those in an astronomy class took their new knowledge and their telescopes to The Nottingham, a local retirement community, and shared views of the skies with the residents there; and students currently enrolled in the “Polar Heroes, in Print and on Film” class are scheduled to help with the penguin exhibit at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo.

Faculty from throughout the jniversity are invited to design classes for LLI, and Meyer’s staff evaluates them. Most of the classes are 16 hours, but the Institute is beginning to create some one-day programs.
Bob Gates, an English professor at SU and a professional photographer, has offered workshops with the Syracuse Camera Club. It was a natural progression, he said, to develop a photography class for LLI.
It was through the Camera Club that the Burchhardts met Gates, and when they learned of this new course, they decided to enroll.

Bob and Diana like being in a class with their contemporaries, and they appreciate the different skill levels that their fellow students bring.

“You learn from your peers as well as the instructor,” Diana Burchhardt said. Weiss also learned of this class through the Syracuse Camera Club, and shares Diana’s believe that you learn from not only the professor, but other students as well.

“It’s quite enjoyable to come together with new people who share an interest in a particular topic,” she said. “There is also something nice about taking a class with people who are a bit older, and who share some similar sensibilities and also bring a lifetime of different experiences together.”

Photography has been an interest of Weiss’ since childhood, and now she sees the class as a way to learn more about the field in general, to help her move from film to digital photography, and to do more with her photographs then store them away.

Weiss, who turns 55 in June, received her Master of Social Work from Syracuse University, with a concentration in gerontology, one of the first years that the Gerontology Center was in existence.
“I guess it’s a little full circle to now be taking a class through the Gerontology Center’s Lifelong Learning Center,” she said.

LLI will offer two classes in June. In “Art Now,” Professor Judith Meighan, of SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, will take students on walking tours of various art spaces in the area and discuss ways to make the programs at these facilities more appealing to mature visitors.

A second class will be “The Universe: From the beginning to the end?” with SU physics professor Carl Rosenzweig. According to a course description, this collaborative effort with downtown Syracuse’s Museum of Science and Technology (The MOST) “will explore with students the structure, origins and fate of the Universe, from the dramatic birth of everything in the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago.”
Working with some of the facilities and museums in Syracuse, Meyer said, allows them to focus on some of the wonderful aspects of Central New York.

It’s “a celebration of things we have here in Syracuse,” she said.

For more information on the program, visit www.maxwell.syr.edu
www.maxwell.syr.edu/cpr/gerontology and click on the Lifelong Learning Institute link.