Lifelong learning offerings span metropolitan Phoenix
Fall 2008 educational offerings from <a href="http://lifelonglearning.asu.edu/" target="_blank" title="ASU Osher Lifelong Learning">Arizona State University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute</a> will span the Valley from Sun City Grand in the northwest to ASU’s Polytechnic campus in the southeast. Classes also will be offered on ASU’s West campus in Phoenix and at the Tempe Public Library through a partnership with Tempe Connections. Additionally, an “Art Inspiring Art” workshop will take place downtown at the Phoenix Art Museum.<br /><br />“We’re pleased to make high-quality educational offerings for mature adults available to more Valley residents,” says Diane Gruber, director of ASU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. “With intellectually stimulating short courses, lectures, workshops, and travel opportunities, there’s something to match everyone’s interests.”<br /><br />Courses are taught by ASU professors, emeritus faculty, and top community instructors, with a range of topics such as film, foreign affairs, Arizona history, and contemporary medicine.<br /><br />Among the course offerings this fall at Sun City Grand are “Ancestral Puebloan People” and “How Your Brain Works.” On ASU’s West campus, community members can choose from classes including “What Do Diseases Look Like? Revealed Through the Fascinating World of Radiology” and “Monday Nights at the Opera.”<br /><br />“The opera class has been very popular, and we’re expanding its scope this fall,” Gruber says. Presented in partnership with Arizona Opera, the class will address topics including French opera and nineteenth-century Italian opera. Arizona Opera docents will preview both upcoming Arizona Opera productions and live digital broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera productions to be shown in local movie theaters.<br /><br />Courses to be held at the Tempe Public Library include “The First 100 Years of Quantum Physics” and “Appreciating Jazz.” At ASU’s Polytechnic campus in Mesa, short courses on topics including “Writing Family History” are offered along with several free lectures. The free lectures cover a variety of subjects such as “The Presidential Campaign and the Media” and “Happiness, Virtue and Love.”<br /><br />The “Art Inspiring Art” workshop at the Phoenix Art Museum explores ekphrasis, a device in which one artistic medium directly inspires another. Participants will create their own written works inspired by the masters and guided by Catherine Hammond, Arizona poet and Roster Artist for the Arizona Commission on the Arts.<br /><br />Members of the ASU Osher Lifelong Learning Institute enjoy benefits including electronic access to the vast holdings of the ASU Library system and community borrower privileges at ASU’s Polytechnic and West campus libraries.<br /><br />ASU Osher Lifelong Learning Institute programs are funded in part by the Bernard Osher Foundation, which supports university-quality educational offerings for mature students interested in learning for the love of learning. ASU is one of 18 colleges and universities across the United States to have been awarded a permanent Osher Foundation endowment to sustain and support its programs.<br /><br />Most fall classes start in October. Registration procedures vary by location; details are available at <a href="http://lifelonglearning.asu.edu/">http://lifelonglearning.asu.edu</a>.<…;