Lifelong Learning personnel. From left: Judith Napp, board member; Annie Boehning, Director of Development; Olga Kay, Program Coordinator.
Did you go to college as a teenager or young adult and plough through course after course just trying to graduate? College for most young people is complicated with academic schedules as well as social schedules and in many cases economic pressures. Yet it’s a fact that many retirees would welcome the opportunity to have the time and resources to go back to college and actually enjoy the learning process without the pressures of homework, term papers and exams. Wouldn’t it be a dream come true to be able to take a course on Shakespeare’s sonnets or music appreciation or 19th century literature again for pure enjoyment?
So there is good news on the Treasure Coast: the Vero Beach Museum of Art has partnered with Boca Raton-based Florida Atlantic University to bring new learning opportunities to the older residents of our area. If you are retired and have not dropped in on the Museum of Art lately to see their course schedules, you may be missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Last year, the museum put into action a project called the Lifelong Learning Society, participating in what has become the largest LLS in the nation. In 1980, recalls FAU Treasure Coast Program Director Andra Boehning, the university launched what was then called the Society for Older Students program with several hundred students. In 1988 the program changed its name to the Lifelong Learning Society and now boasts more than 18,000 members. The university has seven campuses featuring LLS classes including Boca Raton, Palm Beach and Stuart. The program, says Boehning, “is a self-supporting entity that does not receive public funds.”
Read the entire article in the March 2007 issue
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