A Benefits Overview for The Academic Host

Hosting a Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) on your campus will have many benefits for everyone, including your faculty, your students and the entire community. Following are just some of those benefits.

• Having people of vast experience and great intellectual curiosity on your campus provides fresh inspiration and focus to both the faculty and the students.
• A LLI on campus means that your faculty will have the opportunity to try out creative and innovative methods of teaching, at the same time broadening their knowledge of the subject since the viewpoint of older students may provide an entirely different perspective.
• Providing support for a LLI at your school enhances the quality of education for your traditional students.
• A LLI provides your institution with an opportunity to offer a wide variety of intergenerational opportunities to your younger students.
• A LLI adds diversity to your campus in terms of age range.
• Having a LLI at your school helps fulfill your school’s responsibility to act as an educational resource for the whole community.
• Hosting a LLI ties the needs of the community to the expertise of your school.
• LLI serves as an ambassador for your institution.
• A LLI located on your campus may influence where people decide to retire – it brings active, intelligent people into a community.
• LLI members will attend cultural events at your school.
• LLI members give money to fund scholarships and special events.
• LLI members will "market" your institution to their grandchildren and others.
• ILR members are often opinion leaders in the community and can help your school build support for legislative appropriations.
• LLI members become "Friends" of your school, which expands your fundraising opportunities.
• LLI members volunteer their time and expertise, which enhances your institution’s abilities to be the best educational facility possible.

When I retired, I realized that both my emotional and intellectual life needed a wider scope.

I began attending the various functions and felt deeply satisfied by the rich intellectual environment in the organization and at the university."

-Institute Member

A Benefits Overview for The Institute

Being sponsored by a college or university offers an Institute unparalleled and unique opportunities and benefits. Following are just some of the more tangible benefits.

• A college or university location means that Institute members are part of an exciting and innovative learning environment.
• Institutes develop and maintain unique and beneficial relationships with their host institutions.
• Under the umbrella of the local college or university, Institutes have instant credibility with the surrounding community. This makes community outreach much easier.
• The Institute and its members have access to the finest academic and social resources.
• Under the aegis of the college or university, the Institute is assured of academic credibility.
• The Institute knows that the high standards of the host will ensure the same high standards in the Institute.
• The host institution and the Institute have a commitment to each other, ensuring a symbiotic relationship.
• For the Institute, being affiliated with a local college or university sets them apart from other senior programs.

An aging problem? No problem. Put senior citizens back in college. Under such conditions, accustomed to lifelong learning, why shouldn’t they remain creative and innovative to very nearly the end of their lives?

-Issac Asimov

A Benefits Overview for The Member

The benefits of belonging to a lifelong learning institute (LLI) for individual members are almost too numerous to list. Following are some of the more obvious ones.

• Enlarges one’s interests.
• Enriches established friendships.
• Provides opportunities to meet new people.
• Keeps one current, active and young.
• Enables one to make new friends, contacts, relationships and connections.
• Expands one’s horizons.
• Allows one to have fun, gain respect and exchange ideas.
• Provides opportunities to develop new ideas and handle change.
• Opens one’s mind to what is new…instead of dwelling in the past and rejecting the new out of hand.
• Gets people involved in the give and take of lively discussions.
• Provides a chance to learn more about current events.
• Continues the pattern of life-long learning.
• Allows one to gain a better understanding of the world and themselves.
• Members engage in camaraderie with their peers.
• Those who belong to a LLI seek knowledge, get together to share it, ask questions and try and find new ideas and insights.
• Members of affiliated LLIs are eligible to participate in domestic study/travel programs designed exclusively by and for LLI members.
• Opportunities exist for volunteer work on the national level, serving on committees for conference planning and other special projects.
• An LLI has been called a health club for the brain.
• Membership in a LLI develops insight, stimulates curiosity and satisfies the intellect.

If the older generation wishes to be valued, as the elders were in times past, our retirements must be vigorous ones… where we give of ourselves and become a treasured resource.

…Institute Member