The Bernard Osher Foundation has provided a $1 million endowment to 119 colleges and universities across the nation to establish Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI). These institutes are housed in the Continuing Education departments of the schools and offer noncredit courses for senior citizens. The National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) has been offering a course entitled Learning from Others: The Power of Public Deliberation through the OLLI program at the University of Dayton.

The six-week course meets weekly for two hours, and different NIFI issue guides are used each week as the focus of a forum with the class. The students obtain a copy of the issue guide from the NIFI website (www.nifi.org) or it is supplied as a part of the course fee. Carol Farquhar Nugent of NIFI has been serving as the convener and recorder for the course, and various individuals have served as moderators. The course has been running for three years with a full class (20-25 students) each term and very favorable ratings.

NIFI would like to offer a similar course at each of the universities where OLLI programs exist. Click here to see a list of the schools with OLLI programs. 

If you live near one of these institutions, would you like to help us establish a course there? It would be a lot of fun and would help the Kettering Foundation and NIFI spread the word about the power of public deliberation.

If you are interested, please e-mail Carol Farquhar Nugent at cfarnug@nifi.org.

List of colleges and universities with Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes