Creative Collaborations
and
Productive Partnerships
OLLI Partnerships on Campus and Beyond
Christine Catanzarite
Director, OLLI at Illinois
Welcome to OLLI at Illinois!
We are fortunate to be situated firmly at the intersection
of the university’s tripartite mission to enhance
education, research, and outreach. Our courses, lectures,
and other educational activities give us the opportunity to
learn from some of the leading scholars in a wide variety
of fields; the campus’ programs that support research
endeavors are generous in making those resources
available to our members; and, as a program that brings
together members from both university and nonuniversity backgrounds, we are both a symbol of the
university’s outreach, and a model for how outreach can
be leveraged for multiple and reciprocal benefits.
This openness to new friends and partners is a
significant part of what we do – and it’s a
campuswide phenomenon that lives in the many
centers and programs devoted to exploring new
avenues for traveling across departmental borders
and bringing new voices into the conversation. It’s a
tradition that is best exemplified by our “mascot,”
the Alma Mater, who welcomes people to campus
with outstretched arms. Even the Quad at the heart
of campus is marked by intersecting pathways.
So partnerships are a natural and integral part of
our campus culture – and reaching out to others is
a big part of what we do at OLLI.
Many of our partners have been generous in providing services and
benefits for our members – things that extend and enhance the member
experience by creating additional opportunities.
One of our most valuable partners is the University Library – with
more than 24 million holdings, it is the second largest academic library
in the country, and the third-largest overall (just behind the Library of
Congress and Harvard University). Each OLLI member receives full
access to the library and its resources, from books to extensive
electronic holdings such as thousands of newspapers, magazines,
journals, and digitized materials which can be read online.
The Library staff organizes special informational sessions for our
members to acquaint them with all of the services available to them;
and also coordinates short courses and lectures especially for our
members, focusing on specialized aspects of their collections – from the
Sousa Archives and Law Library to the world-renowned Rare Book and
Manuscript Library (which recently offered sessions on Italian
Renaissance art and the personal diaries of one of the original
“Monuments Men”).
The Department of Kinesiology and
Community Health offers several
programs that are oriented toward an
over-50 audience – especially their
Senior Fitness Program, a multifaceted,
personalized exercise program that is
executed by scholars who have done
extensive research on wellness and
fitness for senior populations. The
program conducts periodic workshops
for our members, and offers a 20%
discount for those who wish to enroll in
the program.
Partnerships with outreach programs allow our members
to participate in the university’s Day of Service; last year,
more than 40 of our members volunteered on a project to
package 165,000 healthy, easy-to-prepare meals for the
local food bank (1000 meals for every year the university
has been in existence!).
Other outreach programs include mentorship programs
that allow our members to serve as one-on-one mentors
for Illinois freshmen who come from disadvantaged
backgrounds and represent the first members of their
family to attend college; and a program that pairs our
members with business men and women from China who
are part of a yearlong program to study Western business
practices – for language practice and social engagement.
We take our programs into other areas of the
community, as well, through lectures and collaborative
events at senior residential centers in town, local
libraries, and, starting soon, discussions after select
films at our local art theater. We have established a
relationship with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony
that included us in the process of interviewing their top
four candidates for the position of conductor, and
which now gives us exclusive previews (by the
conductor and their guest artists) of each of their major
performances.
A few weeks ago, we embarked upon a new partnership
with the world-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group,
which has built a productive relationship with the
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on campus –
and which not only performs at Illinois each spring, but
spends one week in residence, conducting outreach and
arts programs at a variety of locations. This year, we
were a part of that residence – and, for one afternoon,
we became the Osher Lifelong Dancing Institute!
The Mark Morris Dance Group’s managing director and
two of the dancers from the company came to OLLI for
a workshop that introduced our members to the
intricacies of putting together a dance program.
After a short presentation and discussion, they led us
through some warm-up exercises – and then taught us a
complex sequence of steps that would be featured in their
performance the next evening. More than 50 of our
members, ranging in age from 51 to 95, participated in
this choreographic wonder, accompanied by a New Yorkbased percussionist who was in town for a different
performance at the campus art museum and who, upon
hearing about the event at OLLI, offered to join the fun.
The professional dancers were so impressed with the
eagerness and skill our members demonstrated that they
asked us, then and there, if we would be a part of their
residency activities next March!
One of our most innovative partnerships is the Citizen
Scientist initiative – among the first of its kind, and a
model for lifelong learning that also capitalizes on our
students’ inquisitiveness and the campus’ strengths in the
sciences – especially the Beckman Institute for Advanced
Science and Technology, and the Institute for Genomic
Biology.
(These are ideal partners, because both of them embrace
interdisciplinary exchange and creativity in research –
the Institute for Genomic Biology, which was established
in 2006, was built with an open floor plan that
encourages researchers to look around and see what their
colleagues are up to, rather than enclosed labs that would
keep the crop scientists separate from the
astrobiologists.)
In the Citizen Scientist Program, established in 2011,
OLLI volunteers work in labs across campus – most of
them have no background in science, and many of them
had no prior affiliation with the university. They serve,
not as research subjects, but as volunteer scholars in the
labs. They assist in working with human and animal
subjects in research projects, administering
questionnaires and creating data-entry systems, and
other projects (including cutting-edge technology) that
introduce them to new worlds. One of our members, a
retired biochemist, is a fully-integrated member of his
lab – making DNA for testing, attending lab meetings,
and presenting papers on his work at symposia and
seminars.
The values for our members and the researchers in the labs are
mutual, and enhanced by intergenerational contact. Participating
labs are encouraged to involve volunteers in lab meetings, lecture
series, and other activities; and a graduate student in each lab is
assigned as a mentor to the OLLI volunteer, which helps to orient
our volunteers and gives the mentor valuable supervisory
experience. The labs benefit from the volunteer work of older adults
who bring their own life experiences to the project. Having OLLI
scholars in the labs teaches undergraduate and graduate students to
talk about their work to educated non-specialists.
At its best, the Citizen Scientist Program demonstrates the value of
our members in high-level research enterprise that contributes to
the production of new knowledge. And our members develop a
sense of accomplishment even beyond their other personal and
professional achievements, because they are making important
contributions in areas they may never have expected to find
themselves in.
As the word of this initiative continues to spread across campus,
even more scientists want OLLI volunteers in their labs: in the past
three months, we have doubled the size of the program, and now
have more than 30 volunteers working in approximately 20 labs.
With this growth, we are working to expand in two new ways:
offering OLLI volunteers as individual research assistants (for
those scholars, especially in the social sciences and humanities,
who don’t do lab-based research). . .and a companion Citizen
Artist Program, where our members will volunteer in the
university’s art museum, helping to install exhibitions and catalog
artworks; work in costume and scene shops at the performing arts
center; and serve as research assistants for faculty projects in artsrelated disciplines.
There has been a significant shift in the requirements of many federal
grant-making organizations and other funding sources – which ask
applicants to incorporate an outreach component into their
proposals, to demonstrate the real-world benefits of the research that
is being undertaken. Several of those scholars have invited us to
become partners in their grant proposals. One of those projects, a
study of the origins of life in the universe, has already received
funding from NASA; other proposals, including one that would
establish a center for learning and aging on campus, are still pending.
The benefits of such a partnership are numerous: new OLLI
instructors and courses based on the research project; increased
connections to the campus and opportunities for lectures, travel, and
in-depth tours of the research facilities; in some cases, a bit of
additional funding is available to support these and other new
initiatives.
Our newest project is one that engages beyond our own campus
and community – a partnership with the National Endowment for
the Humanities that builds upon the books, films, and other
educational materials that the NEH produces each year, with the
potential for being rich additions to the programs that we offer.
The NEH mission – which states that “democracy demands
wisdom” - includes continuing education and lifelong learning as
one of its platforms. The materials they produce are intended for a
broad audience, and OLLI programs (ours, and perhaps some of
yours, too) are natural and congenial constituencies for this kind
of outreach at the local levels.
We have held introductory meetings for our volunteer leadership and
community partners (especially libraries), and formed a working
consortium of members – the first steps toward a partnership
between OLLI and the NEH that will allow us to draw on existing
resources and leverage them for greater benefits for all of the
partners.
Many of those projects are available in digital formats or in university
and community libraries, and many of them are also accompanied by
detailed teaching materials. They are free and public. They include
films, books, and other materials on such topics as the history of the
Civil Rights movement, the development of American popular music,
and Muslim journeys in the contemporary world.
Most of these materials can be found online at
www.neh.gov – and the Office of Public Programs
(http://www.neh.gov/divisions/public) can provide
additional information about incorporating these
resources into your own programs.
OLLI offers a vibrant, engaged community of members who have
much to offer – and who are eager to explore new opportunities
for getting involved, as well. The more opportunities they have to
connect to each other and the broader community around them
(the campus and all of its vast resources, the community that
supports and is served by the university), the more connected they
will be. They more connected they are, the more investment they
will continue to have as productive, engaged scholars and citizens.
OLLI members serve an important function as ambassadors in both
directions – bringing so much to their work on campus projects,
and taking so much away, too. The presence of an active lifelong
learning program – and the enthusiastic local commitments to
supporting it – is an investment in building bridges that span
generations, professional worlds, and personal spheres.
Thank you!
I am happy to answer any questions or share
additional information about the collaborations and
partnerships described here.
Please contact me at:
Christine Catanzarite
catanzar@illinois.edu
(217) 244-9141