Summer school for senior adults who love lifelong learning
“Keep Calm … And Study Your History: A Look at Controversial Presidential Elections in America’s Past” is the title of a class that will be taught during the summer term of the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning (ORICL).
“It will be a telling, and at times, chilling, reminder that our democracy has come under siege before – and survived,” wrote the instructors, Steve Reddick and Michael Toomey.
Reddick, now retired, was a popular American history teacher at Jefferson Middle School in Oak Ridge, and Toomey is recently retired from Lincoln Memorial University, where he had been professor of history. The course will be one of 57 classes and four excursions offered by ORICL’s low-cost lifelong learning program, described as “a perfect blend of those who love to learn with those who love to teach.”
Toomey will also teach a course on George Armstrong Custer, the legendary “Indian fighter.” Other history classes will cover topics such as Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln as a general, Lady Jane Grey, the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, stories from the Secret City (Zoom), automobiles and hot rodding. Even a class on the pipe organ will address its history, as well as its construction and tonal traits.
For those who like science and technology, courses will be offered on computer security, hummingbirds and the oil industry’s impact on world wars and history.
ORICL’s in-person and online classes will be held mostly in the Coffey-McNally building on Roane State Community College’s Oak Ridge Branch Campus, 701 Briarcliff Ave.
Online registration opened Tuesday, April 16. The summer catalog is posted on ORICL’s website, www.roanestate.edu/oricl. The registration form and calendar are also posted there. Registration forms in the printed catalog can be sent or delivered to the office now.
The summer term runs from Monday, June 3, through Friday, Aug. 2. The fee for the summer term for those who are not current ORICL members is $75. You may pay it online or by check included with the mailed paper form. Mail your form and check to ORICL, RSCC, 701 Briarcliff Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. For more information, contact the ORICL office at 865-481-8222 or at oricl@roanestate.edu.
You can learn about Emily Dickinson’s poetry, improve your memoir writing and read Shakespeare out loud (Zoom).If you enjoy participating in book groups, ORICL offers courses on classical literature, mystery, fiction, nonfiction, speculative fiction and technical books (most are on Zoom only).
This term’s language courses include Latin, Russian and Ukrainian.
Classes are being offered on a variety of other subjects such as Jewish mysticism and mystics, the human-animal bond, retirement income, former intelligence officers, the Tennessee electronic library and municipal government. The class “Lovingkindness” is an online study of Buddhist philosophy and an opportunity to meditate.
Hobbyists may enjoy ORICL’s classes on crochet, birding by eye and ear, as well as cryptic varietal crosswords (Zoom only). Lovers of music should like the course on the life and music of Gustav Mahler.
For a fee, you can join a group that will get reserved seating at the Flatwater Tales Storytelling events in early June at the Historic Grove Theater in Oak Ridge, take a tour of Oak Ridge and Clinton with City Historian Ray Smith, visit historic landmarks of 18th century East Tennessee and enjoy the play “Grease” at the Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville.
Also, for a fee, you can register through ORICL to take art classes in making earrings and mugs at the Oak Ridge Art Center, 201 Badger Ave.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Summer school for senior adults who love lifelong learning
