NEW EIN WEB POSTINGS FOR MARCH
Under MANAGING YOUR LLI
Portrait of a Saturday LLI – LIFE Program, Cheyenne, WY
Learning Later, Living Greater Program – Brevard ElderLearning Program, FL
A Description of the AIUTA International Organization
LLI Sampler – LLI, James Madison University, VA
Wednesdays at the IRP – Institute for Retired Professionals, NY
Responses to Technology – Berkshire Institute for Lifetime Learning, MA
Overview of WALLA Courses – Wabash Area Lifetime Learning Association, Inc. IN
Essay on Senior College – Senior College, University of Maine Hutchinson Center, ME
How to Start a Senior Theatre – Newsletter ArtAge Publications
Portrait of a Lifelong Learner – IRP, New School, New York
Retirement Communities – LLI Responses to Query from SAIL Program, TX

Under UPCOMING CONFERENCES
Presenters for Midwest Conference – Institute for Continued Learning, IL

LLI News
LLI News for March

UPDATE NE/EAST REGIONAL LLI CONFERENCE
On behalf of SUNY Potsdam and the Conference Committee, we invite you to join us and other Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) leaders and members from the Northeastern region and throughout the United States and Canada as we celebrate learning at its best June 3-5, 2007. What a great opportunity to share information regarding the successes and challenges that are unique to our own LLI’s and how our dreams have become our adventures. We invite our friends from the Elderhostel Institute Network (EIN) as well as our Osher friends and we particularly invite YOU. It is your presence and participation that will make this conference invigorating and exciting.

This Conference is pleased to offer an optional pre-conference event on Saturday, June 2, 2007 that will put a bounce in your step and a “beat to your feet” as we host Music: Follow the Beat to Well-Being. With the well-known Crane School of Music located on the SUNY Potsdam Campus, it is an honor to offer you an afternoon of musical and educational enjoyment which includes a health component related to music provided by current and retired faculty as well as members of our own Lifelong Learning Institute.

We are especially thrilled to announce that our Keynote Speaker will be Nancy Merz-Nordstrom, Director of the Elderhostel Learning Network, and more recently, author of “Learning Later, Living Greater: The Secret for Making the Most of Your After-50 Years”. Nancy will talk about the benefits of later-life learning and how it challenges people to become involved in meaningful new avenues of productivity including learning for the sheer joy of learning something new, educational travel, volunteerism, civic action as well as staying mentally and spiritually young.

For more conference information and information about being a presenter at this conference, please contact Nancy Hess at 315-267-2168 or email her at hessnl@potsdam.edu or go to the conference web site –
http://www.potsdam.edu/SOAR/conference

UPDATE MIDWEST REGIONAL LLI CONFERENCE
To get an idea of the varied and interesting presentations that will be offered at the Midwest Regional LLI conference, being sponsored by the Institute for Continued Learning at Roosevelt University in Shaumburg, IL this coming August 19-21, be sure to click on Upcoming Conferences on the EIN web site, where an overview of what is going to be offered, can be found.

SPREADING THE WORD ABOUT LATER-LIFE LEARNING
Nancy Merz Nordstrom, EIN director, is speaking on March 1st at the orientation of a brand new LLI being hosted by Wheelock College in Boston. Stonewall Communities in partnership with the College will soon launch the nation’s first lifelong learning institute designed for and by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults ages 50 and up. It will, of course, be open to anyone who would like to join. She will also be speaking at a workshop entitled Third Age: The Bonus Years, being hosted by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University near Boston in mid-June. The topic of her talk will be Learning Later, Living Greater, which is also the title of her new book. Both these opportunities will give Nancy the chance to talk about the Elderhostel Institute Network, lifelong learning institutes, and the spread of the learning in retirement movement around the world.

NEW AFFILIATE
Welcome to the Institute for Retirees in Pursuit of Education (IRPE) at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, NY. The IRPE is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. It is one of the largest organizations of its kind in the country with a membership of about 1,000 people. The Institute offers more than 65 courses in literature, language, history, politics, health, and money management, as well as workshops in art, music, computer, dance, yoga, and tai chi. Members may take as many courses as they wish. Courses are taught by members who are experts in their fields, augmented by retired Brooklyn College professors and guest lecturers from the community. IRPE members can also attend many of Brooklyn College’s lectures, concerts and other events. The Institute has an active travel program which runs eight to ten trips a year, ranging from one-day tours in or around New York City to three-day trips to more distant places of cultural or historic interest.

ALL ABOUT AIUTA
Be sure to read the description of AIUTA that has just been posted on the EIN web site. Stan Miller, a long-time U3A member in Great Britain has been elected as the first English-speaking president of the International Association of Universities of the Third Age (AIUTA). Similar in design to the Elderhostel Institute Network, but on a more global scale, AIUTA was established in 1976, primarily to take promote conferences and ongoing research. EIN has had several long-distance conversations with Stan, via the new SKYPE Network (a free Internet-based phone system), and by email, about how LLIs in North America and those who belong to AIUTA might work more closely together.

Nina Tumosan, at St. Louis University in Missouri has been recently appointed as the North American liaison for AUITA. Should anyone have any questions about how your program can participate in AUITA programs, she can be reached at tumosan@slu.edu. She looks forward to hearing from you.

EU FUNDS OLDER ADULT LEARNING
The European Union is funding two programs designed to help older adults become more computer literate. The first program, eLearning for Seniors, (eLSe) will be tested by a group of older volunteers in Sweden, Germany, Spain and the UK. Once it passes the testing phase it will be submitted to the European Commission for final approval. The second project, Seniors Training (SenTrain), and led by the University of ErlangenNurnberg, will include older adults from the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic. The outcome of SenTrain will be a short course of 10 lessons aimed at providing training skills for seniors with a good grasp of technology who have an interest in training other seniors wishing to improve their computing skills. Both projects will be ready for widespread distribution later in 2007.

NEW U3A WEB SITE
For those of you who enjoy learning about older adult learning in other countries, the national organization of U3As in the UK now has a new web site – www.u3a-info.co.uk Check it out and see what’s happening in the UK.

WORLDCAT – LITERARY RESOURCE
Thanks to a recent issue of “Signposts,” edited by Tom Holloway in the UK and Rick Swindell in Australia, for this useful information. Worldcat is the world’s largest network of library content and services, enabling you to search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. The URL is www.worldcat.org. If you would like to get on the “Signposts” email list, contact Tom Holloway at tom@worldu3a.org. He would also be delighted to get snippets of information for inclusion in “Signposts.”

IRP DEATH COURSE GETS MEDIA ATTENTION
“Signing Up to Study Death,” by Lenore Skenazy, was the title of a feature article that ran in the New York Sun on February 12th. The article went into great detail about the course “Death: Facing the Inevitable,” given at the Institute for Retired Professionals in New York City this winter. So…if your program is giving an unusual course, let your local media know. It’s great publicity. Let EIN know too. We will be sure to give it space on our web site.

LANGUAGE GROUPS
If your LLI offers foreign language instruction, this web site may be of interest to the facilitators. Thanks to the February, 2007 issue of U3A Signposts for publicizing this resource. along. http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
The L.I.F.E. Program at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York will be showing a slide presentation developed by Al Gore and based on his Oscar-winning documentary of the same name. The presenter has been trained to deliver this program which includes relevant slides for this area of New York, and focuses on local and regional solutions to the problem of global warming. This program is free to everyone.

GREAT DECISIONS AT WCTC
This winter the Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin is the site of the Great Decisions lecture series, available as a live Internet downlink feed from UM-Milwaukee’s Institute of World Affairs. WCTC is pleased to be one of the Wisconsin outreach sites for this excellent world affairs program developed by the Foreign Policy Association held at various sites across the country. LIR members will be joining the local community to learn about the major global issues of our times form experts in US foreign policy and many other fields.

TRIBUTE CARDS FUND RAISING PROGRAM
The McGill Learning in Retirement program in Montreal has started a Tribute Card Program. This program is intended to acknowledge special events in people’s lives. Donations are being earmarked primarily for development and training purposes by MILR.

SPEAK UP FOR A.L.L.
Members of the Academy for Lifelong Learning on Cape Cod, who want to share their knowledge and expertise with other organizations on the Cape are being recruited for the A.L.L. Speakers’ Bureau. This is the perfect way to spread the word about your program within your community.

COMMERCE UNSEEN
Commerce Unseen trips at the Bradley University ILR in Peoria are designed to take members into unseen and sometimes overlooked businesses within the community. Most trips are $20 and include van transportation, the tour, and lunch. In January members visited the Peoria Police Department, the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Simulator Lab, and the Sacred Heart Church Renovation project.

NEW BOOKS FOR LLI COURSES
The following summaries were taken from www.booksamillion.com
The Innocent Man, by John Grisham is his first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits—drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder.
With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

The World Is Flat , by Thomas L. Friedman, is his account of the great changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the globe in touch as never before. In The World Is Flat, Friedman at once shows “how and why globalization has now shifted into warp drive” (Robert Wright, Slate) and brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering scene unfolding before their eyes. More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

NEW WEB SITES FOR LLI COURSES

SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/
Companion site to a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series documenting the history of American slavery from its beginnings in the British colonies to its end in the Southern states and the years of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Historical overviews, personal narratives, character spotlights, images, and other materials highlight various aspects of the lives of slaves, such as family, religion, and living conditions. Includes educational materials and related reading, film and TV resources, and Web sites.

ARTHUR MILLER FILES - http://www.umich.edu/~amfiles/
Features some material by playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005) from his time as a University of Michigan student, along with analysis of his published works, a biography, a chronology of his life, and links further online resources. Created by University of Michigan students as a scholarly analysis of Arthur Miller's works.

JEAN HERSHOLT: "THE COMPLETE ANDERSEN" -
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/index_e.html
This site bills itself as the most comprehensive edition of Andersen's fairy tales in English (American) on the internet. Translated by Jean Hersholt, the tales include the original 156 printed in Andersen's own time plus the fairy tales found in his papers — and published after his death. Also includes a link to biographical information about Andersen. Searchable. From the Hans Christian Andersen Center of the University of Southern Denmark.

That’s all for this month.
Nancy Merz Nordstrom, M.Ed., Elderhostel Institute Network
Nancy.merz-nordstrom@elderhostel.org
www.elderhostel.org/ein/intro.asp - 617-457-5564

“The really educated person never graduates.” …Anonymous