CSU Channel Islands’s (CSUCI) Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a new classroom/learning lab, a fundraising campaign, and generous donations from members.
 
A recent $50,000 donation from longtime OLLI members Paul and Christine Magie will go to the OLLI program, which provides opportunities for intellectual stimulation and social connection through university-level classes designed for those age 50 and older, but are also open to younger adults.

The Magies want their gift to go toward the furnishings and technology in a state-of-the-art classroom/learning lab for OLLI members. The new area will be in Gateway Hall, currently under construction.
 
“Watching OLLI over the years, we had problems now and then with equipment and we’ve got older people in these classes, not kids, so why not get some more comfortable furniture and new computer equipment and screens,” Paul Magie said. “I thought, ‘I’ve got some retirement money, why not donate it?’”
 
CSUCI OLLI began with Marty Kaplan, a retired professor of social psychology, who, with others, petitioned the Bernard Osher Foundation to bring OLLI to Ventura County, opening it in 2004.

By 2008, OLLI had grown to 500 members, which allowed Kaplan to petition for a $1 million grant from the Osher Foundation. The grant continues to help fund the program.

Today OLLI boasts 705 members and counting. A fundraising drive for the new classroom, called OLLI 20th Anniversary Room to Grow, will build on the momentum of the recent gift from the Magies and from others who have supported the program with donations.
 
Paul Magie’s association with CSUCI and OLLI goes back to these beginnings, when he was working for the California Conservation Corps, which had its offices at Camarillo State Hospital.

After the hospital buildings were transformed into CSUCI, he was intrigued by OLLI classes being offered on some Saturdays.
 
Magie said he knew his wife would be interested as she had been an educator at Camarillo High School and was always intellectually curious. Both also valued education as they were the first in their families to graduate from college. So after they retired, they wanted to keep learning.

“These were high level college classes, and they were so interesting,” Christine Magie said. “I had a chance to expand my educational background in terms of arts and science. And there are so many excellent instructors with fabulous backgrounds.

“Once a student, always a student,” she said.

OLLI has expert lecturers from across California and the U.S. who teach classes on the arts, sciences, literature, current events, entertainment, ecology, biology, and geography.

Some OLLI members have been so enthusiastic about their classes that they independently arranged trips around the U.S. and abroad to explore what they’ve learned.

One such trip to Iceland last year was inspired by classes on the country’s flora and fauna offered by Amy Denton, a CSUCI professor of biology, and arctic plant expert.
 
“We’ve taken five or six trips with OLLI members,” Christine Magie said. “We’ve been to Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, and we just came back from the Baltics.”
 
The social aspect of OLLI is also strong for like-minded people, which is part of why the new classroom for OLLI and CSUCI Extended University is expected to have comfortable couches and a coffee machine, among other amenities.
 
“We want our space to be not just a classroom space, but a social space for interactions,” Banyai said. “It won’t be an average classroom but designed to be a social experience where people can come, have coffee, mingle, and there will be an indoor and outdoor space.”

The classroom plan brings OLLI members directly onto the main campus with the general student population as OLLI “works toward a more intergenerational education,” Banyai said.

OLLI offers in-person and hybrid classes over Zoom, as well as in-person learning at the John Spoor Broome Library, the Studio Art Center in Camarillo, the Ventura College of Law, and the Goebel Senior Center in Thousand Oaks.

For more on the OLLI program, visit OLLI.