After nine years as a program of the Charlotte Community Foundation, Learning in Retirement is blazing a new trail that includes an enhanced affiliation with Edison College and a change of name.

Learning in Retirement began in 1996 as a program under the aegis of the Charlotte Community Foundation. This close working partnership helped insure the success of LIR over the years. We will always be thankful for it. In recent months, the Foundation has been moving away from program oversight. LIR was invited to reconfigure its relationship to CCF. Our Board saw this as an opportunity to step out on our own – incorporate as an independent not-for profit organization and explore a closer relationship with Edison College where our classes have been taught in recent years. Meetings with Dr. Patricia Land and her staff culminated in a proposal for a new and closer affiliation with Edison that includes moving the LIR office to the campus.

At the same time, we also decided to change our name from Learning in Retirement to Lifelong Learning Institute at Edison College. This decision was prompted by our closer affiliation with Edison and a recommendation of the Elderhostel Institute Network with whom we have relationship as one of many lifelong learning programs they recognize.

This fall our board has been working diligently to prepare and adopt new by-laws and to finalize our agreement with Edison. Special thanks go to Joanne Ryder of our board for her wise leadership and work in the preparation of these by-laws and in our applications for incorporation.

We are excited by these changes and believe they will strengthen our program in the years to come. We hope you share our enthusiasm.

Taken from the spring 2006 newsletter of the Lifelong Learning Institute at Edison College in Punta Gorda, Florida and reprinted here with permission.