From Dick Vernon, ILR, Baldwin Wallace College, Berea, OH – rvernon@worldnet.att.net
We rent rooms for about ¾ of our classes; the college lets us have rooms as available but, like your experience, rooms are at a premium even for the colleges primary purpose – educating undergraduates. The college has graciously provided office space (presently at a remote location) and a computer (with software) for our use. In the near future office space for our ILR will be included with the offices of the Lifelong Learning Department. We have no separate area for socializing, unfortunately. My personal opinion is that a dedicated social area would be most desirable and contribute significantly to increasing member involvement. At one time we had a goal of obtaining 2 classrooms (available afternoons) which would be located near an ILR office and a dedicated area for socializing; the goal was so difficult to achieve I think we have dropped it now.

From Norm Bennett, Institute for Continued Learning, Young Harris College, GA – critter3@whitelion.net
The majority of all our classes are held in college facilities. In fact, the college has identified a specific classroom for our use because space is not presently an issue on campus, nor is it expected to become an issue in the near future. The college also provides office space and the facilities for all our social activities.

From Bob Hartmann, QUEST, City College of New York – bobwea@prodigy.net
Fortunately this is not one of our problems. City College of New York has classes in the evening on two floors of an office building in downtown Manhattan and we have access to this space during the day. Our only caveats are that we must be out before 3:30 p.m. and we can utilize up to six classrooms, one auditorium with overhead audio-visual equipment, and one office with computers. At night the entire two floors are used for the CCNY undergraduate students. This system works out great for us therefore space is not an issue. I know that this is very different from most of our other groups.

From Art Sherman, Berkshire Institute for Lifetime Learning, Berkshire Community College, Pittsfield, MA – gdmads@aol.com
You have struck upon the classic problem. We are fortunate in being able to use the facilities of three colleges in our area – Williams, BCC and now Simons Rock. However, we have successfully used the local Pittsfield Library, which has excellent classrooms, and we have accessed the auditorium of the Clark Art Institute. You may find that the college you are affiliated with has some relatively obscure places that are not normally used as classrooms, i.e., small conference room(s) in the school library. We have also found that by using the college faculty to teach courses for us, they somehow manage to find some of the more obscure locations within the buildings that seem to always be overlooked when your needs are being considered, but are perfectly adequate. Clearly, the jigsaw puzzle of matching class space availability, instructor schedules, etc., is the most difficult job our Curriculum Committee faces. We do not pay rent for the classrooms; however, when we are at the pubic library, we do pay a small fee for room setup. We also use the facilities of the local Holiday Inn in Lenox because of ease of access and parking for our winter semester for a nominal setup fee, because the facility is not well used in this season and the owner is civic minded. You might look to public facilities such as local museums or venues, YMCA, special exhibition spaces, etc.

From Dick Aime, Lifetime Learners Institute, Norwalk, CT – fernaime@juno.com
LLI gives most of our courses in Norwalk Community College’s classrooms, because most of our classes take place in relative off-hours. Not much in the mornings and nothing in the evenings. We do give a few courses at off-campus sites, which are free of charge to us. As to office work, we are an entirely volunteer operation, which takes some doing as we reached a membership of 762 this past spring term. For socializing, we use the Atrium of one of our two main college buildings from 12 noon to 1 p.m. on Fridays – a light day on campus.

From James B. Woodruff – Lyceum, SUNY Binghamton, NY - ffurdoow@pronetisp.net
Lyceum's office is on campus, managed by a part-time coordinator plus a some-times graduate student. (telephones, files, computers, voice mail, university contacts etc.). We pay the
Coordinators wages plus some service expenses. Although class space is offered, university parking mandates classes off campus. For five years we have used a local church where flat parking is available during the week. The area we have is about 40' X 60' which includes a separate entry, kitchen and wash rooms, adequate for 106. For larger gatherings the sanctuary is
available. However make it a point to use university facilities for larger meetings and catered dinners (4-6 times a year). We feel it is important to keep the office in the university to maintain close contact. The membership considers these arrangements to be ideal.

From Joe Scorpion – Academy for Lifelong Learning, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA – scorpion+@andrew.cmu.edu
CLASSROOM SPACE: We have a dedicated classroom on campus, which has a capacity of about 32. We try to schedule as many of our classes in this room as we possibly can. It is given to us rent- free. We did, however, have to furnish it. Through the generosity of some of our members, chairs and carpeting were provided. We did have to purchase a screen, blackboard and window shades, etc.-funding from our budget. If we have need for additional/larger classrooms we deal with the University Registrar. These are provided, where possible, free-of-charge. You must understand that we are in competition for space. However, the University does their best to accommodate us.

OFFICE SPACE: We have an office in the basement of the Alumni House. It is rent- free. We do not pay for any utilities except the telephone. We do pay for use of their copier based upon the number of copies we use. Also, we do reimburse them for the paper we use in our printer by buying them a carton of paper 3-4 times per year.

From Ray Beery, ILR, George Mason University, VA
We have successfully expanded classroom and office space. We simply did what colleges and school systems often do…we bought two double-wide modular buildings. They cost about $30,000 each. After completing our three-year time payments for them, we will give them to the University in return for their continued maintenance and utilities services.

From Larry Wakefield, Center for Learnng in Retirement, Rock Valley College, IL
We hold several classes in churches, a museum, art gallery, artist studios, botanical gardens, nature preserves, an airport, etc. I have not seen any signs that there is any feeling of separation from the College. Each year we have grown in numbers, courses and attendees.

From Sara Craven, Duke ILR, NC
We have moved classes to outlying locations, retirement communities, the science museum, churches, etc. Often these locations are great for large lecture classes – and they may have superb a/v equipment (which we don’t have at our central location) for a film class, etc. People who drive quite a distance to DILR often are grateful for a class closer to home. The drawback is that the overall sense of community is hindered.

From Pamela LeMay, Creative Retirement Institute, Edmonds Community College, Lynnwood, WA
CRI has a dedicated part of a building including two classrooms, one office, one social/meeting room. I suppose that nothing is sacred as far as space but CRI has definitely made it’s imprint – raised funds/volunteered to paint and even plumb in a sink and counter top for the social/coffee area. It is a former dormitory and across from the main campus with its own parking lots. We do share the building but have dedicated space.

From Lifetime Learning Institute of N. Virginia, Annandale
Out of necessity the Lifetime Learning Institute of Northern Virginia (LLI) uses between 10 and 16 sites for classrooms each term, and most of them are not on the Annandale campus of the Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) with which the Institute is affiliated.

In just five years LLI has grown from 38 to about 300 members, and its course offerings have increased from about a dozen to over 30 during each term. Although NVCC (Annandale) is supportive of the Institute it is faced with having to accommodate an expanding student enrollment in the same space. Therefore, LLI’s physical campus presence is limited to a small office, the use of a large meeting room for monthly all-members meetings, and the occasional use of a computer lab or a conference room for classes. This means we have to find classroom space for most of our courses that is as close by as possible. These off-campus facilities consist of churches, senior living facilities, community centers, local government buildings, and instructor homes.

We have found that the dispersal has brought us members just by having a presence throughout a relatively wide area. Indeed during this past year a few community and senior living centers have asked us to consider them as possible sites for our courses. Of course considerable time must be devoted to administering the off- campus location task. During curriculum planning for each term a number of factors come into play when deciding on locations—instructor preference (all are volunteers), class size, audio-visual requirements, parking, availability for the desired class schedule, course location vis-à-vis LLI member residences and rental cost. We rent space at churches and in exchange for no charge for space at senior living facilities the residents can attend the LLI courses offered at the particular facility without having to pay our membership fee. There is no charge for using community and government centers.

After all of the logistics are set there may be occasions when our volunteer instructors need to change their availability or we find that more members than expected register for a particular course. Then its “off-to-the-races” to make these last-minute changes!!