Chatham's campus in Richland teams with CMU to offer enrichment programs for older learners

For the past three decades, older people interested in continuing their education have been able to take a wide variety of courses at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Starting this fall, a number of those enrichment courses will be available at Chatham University’s Eden Hall campus in Richland Township.

Osher Learning Institutes are funded by the Bernard Osher Foundation in San Francisco, which was launched in 1977 by businessman Bernard Osher “to improve quality of life through support for higher education and the arts,” according to the nonprofit organization.

Unlike a majority of the 124 Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes in the U.S., the one at CMU is an independent nonprofit that does not restrict participation in programs to senior citizens, said Lynn Decker, executive director of Osher at CMU.

“While our mission is to provide courses and activities for an older market, we don’t have a minimum age requirement,” she said. “We have people attending from age 26 to 101, with an average age of 73.”

Before signing up to take classes, participants must become Osher Learning members, which costs $100 a year, or $50 for the remainder of 2021. Members then pay $60 to take as many courses during the year as they want.

Osher Learning is offering residents who live in a number of North Hills communities a chance to bypass the waiting list to become a member.

An application and list of zip codes eligible for the offer is available online.

Osher is initially offering 14 classes at the Eden Hall campus covering the arts, language, computers, crafts/hobbies, dance/exercise, finance/insurance, self improvement, architecture, medical, contemporary topics/sociology and history. A course description can be viewed in the online catalog on Page 66.

Classes at the Eden Hall campus start on Sept. 13 and will be offered in-person and via Zoom.

People who become Osher members can take any of the 450 courses typically offered during the year at CMU or online. There are no credit requirements or tests for any of the programs.

“We are very excited to be able to collaborate with Chatham to offer our programs to people living near the Eden Hall Campus,” said Lynn Decker, executive director of Osher at CMU.

Decker said many of the courses are taught by instructors from local colleges and universities as well as working professionals.

Osher also offers a number of courses that are taught by people who simply have “an avocation or passion” for a particular topic.

“We try to keep to the spirit of the program by allowing people, whether they have teaching experience or not, to submit a proposal to teach a course,” Decker said. “It’s the members who make the decision about whether they are interested in taking it.”

Decker noted that one of the instructors was a man helping out in the school’s office who had traveled with the symphony as a violinist for a number of years.

“We tried to coerce him into teaching a course about the symphony but he wasn’t interested,” Decker said. “He said his real passion was underwater photography, which he practiced while he was traveling. So he put a course together about that and then brought his wife in to play violin music while he was presenting some of the photos that he had taken.”

In-person courses at Eden Hall and CMU are being offered for people who have been vaccinated against covid-19. Others can participate in the programs online. Membership applicants must complete a Vaccination Attestation Form and a release form.

Chatham’s Eden Hall is located at 6035 Ridge Road.