OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

2025 Southern Regional Conference
for Learning in Retirement

Atlanta, GA, July 21 – 23, 2025

by Tamara Weinberg and Tracey Lee
Submitted to Council August 2025

I. Background

This is the third consecutive Southern Regional Conference for Lifelong Learning that representatives from Quest attended. In 2024, Quest President Donna Ramer and Wayne Cotter attended the conference and presented a session on “Hybrids: Positives and Pitfalls in a Post-Pandemic World,” covering Quest’s use of Hybrid courses. This year, Tamara and Tracey attended and particularly focused on presentations that provided ideas they felt might increase engagement of newer members or that might suggest additional opportunities for new programming.

II. Overview

As previous Quest delegates noted, the majority of organizations at the conference were from OLLIs that had a paid staff and differentiated between members, who paid to sign up for classes, and volunteers, who assisted with program development and administration. Quest has a smaller membership base and higher membership fee than the organizations we spoke to, but we also have considerably more ﬂexibility and less administrative paperwork than these other organizations.

III. General Observations

We agree with the general observations made in the report from last year and add the following:

Most of the LLI organizations seem to be affiliated with Universities or Colleges, although the amount of space and support provided by those entities seems rather limited.

Most organizations have varying membership fees and also charge per-course fees which creates a large administrative burden of sign-ups and fee collection. In addition, representatives reported frustration from members who are “closed out” of courses due to space restrictions.

IV. Highlights: Keynote and Workshops Attended

As in previous conferences we found the keynote speakers to be interesting but not focused on providing signiﬁcant information about the lifelong learning experience. On the other hand, there was a wide variety of breakout sessions that provided more speciﬁc information and case studies from the real-world experiences of the presenters. Below is a summary of the sessions we attended, and we felt were most helpful or provided the information most relevant to Quest.

V. Workshops

Tamara and Tracey together attended the following two workshops, which they felt would be most valuable or interesting to Quest.

Theme Terms: Tie it Together

Presenters: McMillan, College for Seniors Program Manager; Hilary Schroeder, Life Transitions and Special Programs Manager, OLLI at UNC Asheville

A “Theme Term” would be a semester when a large percentage of the courses explore different aspects of a common theme, idea, or question. Every 18 to 24 months, OLLI at UNC Asheville designed a theme which was intended to energize their instructors and members and inspire creativity by creating a program to focus efforts and provide shared goals and structure across their 11 main subject areas. Their target was to have about 25-30% of their courses relate to the theme for the session, including at least one from each subject area. The remainder of the courses were not required to coordinate or address that theme.

The organizers also offered several ﬁeld trips and ﬁlm screenings related to the theme. Much advance planning was required, including brainstorming, workshopping ideas with appropriate stakeholders in smaller and then larger constituencies, and creation of guidelines for how the theme should be incorporated in the courses. All these actions need to be done signiﬁcantly in advance of the applicable themed semester. We think it may be worth exploring whether this approach would be of value to Quest and we would be happy to present a workshop with more information

Examples of previous themes:
Women, Gender, and Social Change
Understanding Science and Technology in a changing world
Race in Black and White
Appalachia – Tradition and Change

Other groups had done:
Titanic 100 years later
World War II: Remembering the past, shaping the future
Anniversary of the Great Gatsby

Should You Launch a Senior Community Leadership Program? Lessons from 30 Years of Leadership

Presenter: Laurel Jernigan, OLLI at UNC Asheville

Laurel explained their Leadership Asheville Seniors Program, which enabled a cohort of about 30 seniors to get involved with community organizations by meeting with community leaders to learn about local issues, and engage with other participants and connect to local community programs with a view to possible future community service. Their program included themes of community history, economy, housing, health, poverty, food systems, environment, government, education, and arts. Each was covered by one full day of programming per week, which included speakers, hands-on activities, and site visits. There was a separate fee for the program to defer a part of the costs and part was otherwise subsidized.

Other OLLIs with leadership programs are:

Furman University with nine sessions around topics, but organized around seniors meeting monthly.

Encore Louisville conducts a four-day program over one month with a focus on deploying into non-proﬁts. Participants come back year after year.

Leadership Greater Hartford Third Age Initiative meets monthly for a year and is fully sponsored and free.

Greater Naples Leadership is a two-year program. In the ﬁrst year, the participant members engage in the monthly meetings, and in the second year, the participants plan for the following year’s cohort.

We think this would be worth exploring this as an opportunity for our members to more closely connect with our community services and to provide interested members with more engaging and socially relevant activities.

Tracey attended the following sessions. Below are her summaries and observations.

The AARP Way – Engaging Lifelong Learning Through Community Volunteerism

This session was basically an explanation of how AARP coordinates and motivates the volunteers in its program. Most of the ideas here were general in nature about making sure that volunteers felt valued by the organization.

Ways to Keep Your Members Engaged Beyond the Classroom

Presenter: Tarilyn McBride, Program Manager, OLLI at LSU

Donna Ramer attended the session presented by this presenter last year, but I thought hearing the presentation and any updates directly would be worthwhile.

This presentation focused primarily on opportunities outside of the OLLI Classroom. Most ideas were identiﬁed by volunteers and brought to the organization. These activities were run off-site and only loosely coordinated with the OLLI organization. There was a long list of sources for ideas such as: library publications and websites, retirement home activity calendars, researching local activities, and local monthly magazine publications.

Some suggested activities were nature walks, lunch groups, coffee presentations, behind the scenes tours, talks on cyber security, lunch and learn, social events (volunteer recognition, lunch bunches, exotic eating), lunch or supper clubs, game nights, pickleball, Mardi gras party, and Alzheimer’s walk.

Although all interesting ideas, the question is whether and how much these activities ﬁt into Quest’s core mission of lifelong learning. We already have some of these in our program (such as lunch and learn and Friday specials). There have been periodic requests to expand our offerings to more active or craft activities. We think it may be worth exploring having a formalized program of how additional activities identiﬁed by Quest should be incorporated and marketed to members and new members. Alternatively, this could allow a launching point for members themselves to create small communities of people to do things with other members off-site.

Web-Based Alternatives to PowerPoint

Since Tamara and Tracey will be providing a PowerPoint workshop in the fall, Tracey attended this technical session to see what new ideas it might contain. The presenter primarily focused on alternative presentation technologies to avoid PowerPoint issues relating to Microsoft licensing fees, restrictions on organizations using external drives, and accommodating presenters who may have “more creative” presentations using Canva or Prezi. The bottom line was that, absent these complications, using PowerPoint is ﬁne and the other platforms have some beneﬁts and some drawbacks. One idea that seemed helpful would be to put up a QR code linked to the slides so members could have those to download or follow along.

Tamara attended the following sessions. Below are her summaries and observations:

Building Stronger Lifelong Learning Institutes Through Collaboration

Presenters: Stacey Rivera, Manager of Operations, Osher National Resource Center at Northwestern University; Steve Thaxton, Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Osher Institutes

This breakout session focused on the range of opportunities to formally partner with other organizations to provide either outward programs (trips and tours) or inbound programs (bring in guest instructors). Each presenter worked with a different type of organization. One paired with nearby retirement communities, where they brought their programming to the retirement facility with the agreement that the LLI members can participate in the program and use the facilities at the retirement community. The presenter stressed that the organization’s goals must be aligned. One type of event would be to collaborate on a theme and bring in speakers. The LLI would either sponsor the speaker or sell tickets, and then invite the community, LLI members, and undergraduates.

Another presenter partnered with local businesses, where the business would invite small groups of LLI members to their facility and give talks about what they do, a possible tour and then perhaps serve lunch to the group. One example was a wine merchant, who explained the process of creating wine and offered a tasting. Many retail businesses welcome the opportunity to offer a program during an otherwise slow time of day. Other types of partners to collaborate with included community organizations, universities, senior centers, and life transition programs. This latter group might be a way for Quest to recruit newly retired people if we can offer a dynamic program.

Streamlining the Curriculum Committee: A Smarter, More Sustainable Approach

Presenter: Jeff Milsteen, OLLI at Emory Curriculum Committee

There were limited options in this time slot, so although I am not on the curriculum committee, I thought there might be ideas to generalize to other parts of Quest. The presenter’s goal was to transition from an advisory group to a working committee. He wanted to make sure they targeted work on program priorities and gave members a sense of ownership and that their contributions mattered, while respecting their time with fewer meetings. He did this by: 1. Redeﬁning the committee goals and setting priorities. 2. Making sure the members understand the mission and are willing to contribute to get buy-in. 3. Empowering the committee to do the things that need to be done – it’s more efficient to divide into subcommittees, with each one focused on one of the goals. The subcommittees would meet as needed, and the whole committee met bi-monthly, on Zoom, to discuss progress.

The takeaways were to make sure to thank people, communicate goals in writing, empower committee members, use technology to work efficiently, and respect each other’s time and responsibilities.

One of their subcommittees was to make better use of their website. They included a section for instructors with guidelines for how to give a successful presentation. Perhaps a group at Quest, including newer members, can review our website to suggest any additional helpful information to include.

Little Things, Big Impact: Elevating Member Engagement

Presenters: Stephanie Tarpley, Program Manager; Annie Nichols, Program Assistant, OLLI at Emory University

Tamara attended this session hoping to learn helpful ways to get more Quest members actively involved in the organization. The focus was really on helping new members connect and feel more a part of the group. The main vehicle was setting up member-driven special interest groups such as a ﬁlm club (there are two – one to attend ﬁlms, and one to discuss ﬁlms with a critic), a potluck meal club, a hiking club, a bird-watching club, a club devoted to all things British, and so on. They also plan bi-monthly food events, such as a pizza party and a Jane Austen tea party, including a Zoom with a Jane Austen society in England. Emory also has a Facebook page for their OLLI, and they use links in their newsletter to bring members to related information on their website. Their website also has short videos introducing members and new courses. Quest could perhaps post the section about new courses from the General Meeting recording on our website for new and current members to view.

VI. Recommendations

Quest should strive to maintain its annual membership fee and ﬂexible schedule, so members can continue to attend as many courses and classes as they choose.

A few ideas we should consider:

From a marketing and member satisfaction perspective, we think that Quest could consider having a theme-organized group of courses with a singular learning objective.

Creating a multi-week program for a cohort of members who want an intensive opportunity to learn about community service might be a valuable addition to our learning mission. Those members would ideally go on to lead a group in speciﬁc service opportunities or join those outside organizations as participating members. This could be a formal course or held during break periods or on Fridays to be more inclusive.

Creating more social opportunities outside of Quest which are solely member run and do not need much support from Quest, but which are advertised to Quest members and open to people joining on a casual or ad hoc basis. Many LLIs had such special interest groups, using the organization as a springboard to develop deeper friendships over shared hobbies or passions.

Offering more “creative” or social meet-ups at 25 Broadway, perhaps during the break periods when Quest has no other programming.

Identify outside organizations that might want to reach senior citizens with useful information, then co-facilitate “public service” programming – for example, have the police speak about scams targeting senior citizens, or the Better Business Bureau discuss consumer protection – perhaps open to the public (if facilities are available, or else by Zoom) to increase awareness of Quest.

One useful idea a participant shared was to have each member’s emergency contact info on the back of their ID, saving time by avoiding having to ﬁnd the master list when need arises, and increasing the likelihood that the info is current.