CSU Dominguez Hills Receives Major Donation for Lifelong Learning Program for Senior Citizens

California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) has received a $1,050,000 donation from the Bernard Osher Foundation to provide continued support for the campus’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) for adults age 50 and older. The funding includes a $1,000,000 endowment and an operational grant of $50,000.

“We are very proud to receive this endowment from the Bernard Osher Foundation as an acknowledgement of the thriving adult learning community we have developed,” says Marge Gordon, dean of the College of Extended and International Education (CEIE), which administers the OLLI program.

CSU Dominguez Hills has offered older adult learning programs since 1992, through the Omnilore program , which was absorbed into OLLI in 2002. CEE became eligible for the endowment after successfully proving it could sustain a lifelong learning program.

Joanne Zitelli, CEIE associate dean, says that with nearly 600 members, OLLI has been a way for the community, including a number of CSU Dominguez Hills alumni, to “connect to the university as a resource.”

“People desire that contact with scholars, especially our faculty who have the ability to adjust their presentations to an audience’s needs,” says Zitelli. “I’ve never had a case where [the instructors] were so erudite that the participants can’t connect on some level to what they’re saying. It’s been a very nice way of promoting one of the best things about Dominguez Hills, which I always thought was the quality of the faculty.”

A $30 annual membership fee gives OLLI students access to 14 lectures a year, seven per semester. Themes such as television and film in the 1950s and politics in the Middle East are presented by faculty and emeriti faculty from CSU Dominguez Hills and other local institutions and professional experts. There is a nominal charge for courses such as computer literacy, memoir writing, or personal finance. Field trips to local museums and historical and cultural sites and walking tour of downtown Los Angeles are also a component of the program, and peer learning is emphasized, with OLLI members leading group discussions on a range of topics as well as facilitating off-site activities.

As in many of the 120 OLLI programs throughout the nation, instructors in the CSU Dominguez Hills program conduct their classes on a volunteer basis, which has helped keep the cost of running the program at the university low, according to Zitelli and Jim Bouchard, senior program development specialist of CEIE Extension Programs. They speculate that the instructors give generously of their time because they recognize the community aspect of the program and because of the gratification of teaching a roomful of older adults eager to learn.

“The faculty members love coming into a hall with students that have 50 years of [life] experience [so] they don’t have to explain everything,” Bouchard notes. “There seems to be some enjoyment factor in having an audience like that.”

Zitelli adds that the members themselves foster a collegial environment.

“One thing I’ve observed in sitting in on the classes and teaching them is the attention they pay to each other,” she says. “It’s a different generation, a different ethos. No cell phones, no texting going on. They’re very, very attentive. I think it ties into this wanting to connect, to listen, to share experiences.”

Gordon echoes this, saying that OLLI “has a lot of ramifications besides just the information that [students are] getting.”

“As a lot of people age, their families and friends move away and become increasingly isolated for a number of reasons,” she says. “What this does is give them a way to reconnect. It gives them a social life, it gives them something exciting to do, it gives them friends.”

For more information on OLLI programs, contact Bouchard at (310) 243-3208 or email jbouchard@csudh.edu or olliassist@csudh.edu.

- Joanie Harmon