Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello and welcome to focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV, dedicated to retired or semi retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Ali is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Ali is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in depth look at the Olli program and encourage you to join in the fun. Hello and welcome. My name is Keith McMillan. I'll be your host today. Today, Holly is going to be looking at one of our most popular classes that is going to be both live and online for the first time this spring. We're also going to look at some quarterly projects that Ali supports, that happens with several collaborating organizations supporting brain health, and finally, a quick peek at some of our special interest groups. Guests today include Dr Rob Levant, who is the director of the Olli program. Please introduce yourself, Doctor, thank you, Keith.
Robert Levrant 1:31
I'm Rob Levent. I'm the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and lifelong learning at UNLV, and the Division of educational outreach, where I serve as the Olli director, among other things, I've been at UNLV for nearly 10 years now. I have seen Ali grow immensely through the pandemic and drop off during the pandemic and start its regrowth that we're experiencing now. Thank
Keith McMillen 1:59
you, and also one of our very active supporters, Linda Edgeworth, how did you come here?
Linda Edgeworth 2:08
Well, I came to Ali like so many people have in that I had to move here because of family circumstances, and I had a lengthy and rewarding career in international election law administration. And when I came here after a few years of traveling worldwide, I decided I was ready to retire. And as a retired person, I had to decide what was next. I'm not a person who's satisfied sitting home watching TV, and I, when I moved here, I didn't know a soul, and I, when I moved into my neighborhood, I decided I would get to know my immediate neighbors. I invited some to dinner and some to brunch. They all came at their appointed times. They didn't know me. I didn't know them, but they all came, and one of them was a member of Ali and there was an open house coming, and she invited me the open house, and when I saw the variety of classes and the vibrancy of the Olli community, I was sold. So that's how I got into Olli, and I've loved every minute of it.
Keith McMillen 3:11
That's a ringing endorsement, if I've ever heard one. Why don't we start talking about the project that you're involved in for this coming semester, and that's a program that Holly has had for a long time called soapbox. Can you give us a clue what soapbox is really all about? Well, soapbox is
Linda Edgeworth 3:29
it isn't just my project. I have five volunteers who work with me, and it is a speaker program. So every Monday, from nine to 1045, we have a guest speaker, a prominent member of the community from a variety of fields of endeavor, from politics to nongovernmental organizations that provide community services to educational professors from the university and elsewhere. And so we have a guest speaker each week, and we cover a variety of subjects. And twice a semester, we have part of our series that's called that's your opinion, where we tackle some tough projects and tough issues facing our community, and we have panel discussions that involve subjects such as the loss of media as we knew it, in terms of veracity of the reporting misinformation, the growth of social media. We've talked about the homeless and how we can solve it and what the issues that prompted are. And later this semester, we're going to be doing another panel discussion on a very important topic, and that is the advantages, the disadvantages, the consequences of mass deportations. But most weeks, it is a special featured guest, and we have some exciting guests coming this semester that, if you'd like me to share, I'll share a little bit.
Keith McMillen 4:56
Yeah, if you can give us a clue that, and also maybe mention. The memorable ones we've had recently in the past, because I know there's been some outstanding guest speakers and so forth. We try
Linda Edgeworth 5:06
to cover a variety of subjects, no week, no two weeks are the same, and no two semesters are the same. But in the past, we've been very lucky to have Sandra Morgan, the first black president of a national football team in the history of the NFL, we've had Lieutenant Governor Sandoval. We've had Metro Police unit that is involved with paramilitary organizations and racist organizations. We've had guests from the embracing project that gave us a really good view of what sex trafficking looks like here in Las Vegas and and what they do to provide services for those survivors. And this year, just I can give you a couple of preview announcements of what we're going to be having this semester. We're starting off with, I think is going to be an incredibly impressive visuals to go with it, but we're having the American Wild Horse conservation, and obviously we value our wild horses as part of our tradition here in Nevada, but we also have they're also facing some serious challenges trying to compete commercially for grazing land, for monitoring and controlling their reproductions and more and more horses, and also some of the environmental concerns from the environmental changes that are making it difficult for them to survive. We're having the mob museum right before Valentine's Day will give their story of the St Valentine's Day Massacre. We're also having a very special guest later. We're having former governor sisolak has agreed to join us for this semester. So those are some of the and we're also having Ethel M chocolate site, because we'd like to have a variety. And this chocolate is based on the Mars family who gave us Mars bars and M M's. And she's going to be talking about the plant they built here, right in the edge of the desert outside of Henderson. And they have very premium chocolates that were a tribute to his mother. And they also have a 300 acre cactus that cactus farm, in which they have a full variety of cactuses. So we try to have a mix of subjects and fields of endeavor. And we've had great speakers.
Keith McMillen 7:28
That's fantastic. I do know that this year, for the first time, this is going to be what we call hybrid. The class will be happening on our campus along Maryland Parkway, but also online. How's that going to look?
Linda Edgeworth 7:42
Well, basically, it's usually a full class. We have over 100 people enroll in the class. It's treated like an enrollment. So it isn't like we have to get a new audience every week. And we've always been very, very lucky at having a full class with a whole the whole room filled for our live speakers. Well, the demand for soapbox has gotten greater, and the demand for more remote access has also been something that Ali and our director has promoted. And so for the first time, people will also be able to enroll remotely, and they'll get a link to the show, to the to the endeavor and the event, and they can sign in and watch from home. One of the features of soapbox is also that we will be able to have questions from our audiences, from remote sites, as well as the people in the classroom. So we call it hybrid, because it involves both live and direct attendance, but also remote attendance. So it should be quite a group, and we're very excited about it. Fantastic.
Keith McMillen 8:48
It sounds like things are moving forward in the 21st century. One of the other projects that we get involved in a lot is collaboration with various community groups and Dr lavrant, let's talk about the first one that came to my mind was brain health. But there are others also, please,
Robert Levrant 9:09
absolutely. We'll start with brain health. We are not alone in that endeavor. We were approached a few years ago by Dr Kate Zong from the Department of brain health and the Kirk Korean School of Medicine here at UNLV. She previous she's a geriatric psychology psychiatrist who previously held leadership positions at the Global Alzheimer's platform, the Cleveland Clinic, Lou Ruvo center and AstraZeneca, to name a few, she and I have been co chairing this she approached us. They've had some great programming, but they didn't turn out an audience the way they had hoped. And by partnering with Ollie, we've been able to bring the brain health new programming to a greater number of people, not just our members, but members of the community, members. Members of UNLV faculty, other students from throughout the university. We have a core group that plans the events the it consists of Dr Zhang and myself, as well as our program manager, Beth Davis, Program Coordinator in the brain health department, Risa Federico, who previously worked for many years at Olli, and the and two of our Olli volunteers, Ed ort and Sonia Feldberg, these events, they take a variety of forms. We've done panel discussions. We've done individual presentations, including one by Dr Jeffrey Cummings, who is a world renowned researcher in Alzheimer's treatment and on the pharmaceutical side, he teaches here and researches here at UNLV, and we've had panel discussions on social engagement, on music, balance, how all of those relate to maintaining your brain health?
Keith McMillen 10:58
Fantastic. We've also, I don't know if they're actually related to this or not, but I have seen occasions where we actually offer some testing.
Robert Levrant 11:07
We do we, in addition to the discussions and panel discussion, the panel discussions and individual presentations will often have, we do an annual balance in memory screening. We do that in conjunction with the OT and physical therapy programs, both at UNLV and at Torah University, their students will come out and screen Olli members as well as members of the community at large for both their balance and their memory. We have demonstrations on exercises, on meditation techniques, a number of hands on activities throughout these sessions as well. That's fantastic.
Keith McMillen 11:47
That's useful even beyond the ALI membership. So the public is informed about these things also, absolutely we
Robert Levrant 11:55
want to try and get it expand our reach as much as we can.
Keith McMillen 12:00
Fantastic. Now we are also collaborating with other organizations. Oh,
Robert Levrant 12:05
absolutely. We work very closely with for example, our next brain health and new event is actually going to be held on March 15, and that's at the age well Expo that the Las Vegas view journal presents each year. They do that twice a year, and every spring, we go and to the south point hotel and casino where it's held, and we have a room where we will have a series of speakers throughout the day, we'll be announcing that that line up here very soon. We haven't finalized anything, so I don't have any spoilers quite yet, but we so we're partnering with the review journal. We're partnering with other other organizations, but we partner quite a bit within our campus community. In particular, for example, we work very closely with the Office of Government and Community Engagement with bringing speakers to campus to to our issues that relate to our membership. Recently, we had the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Javier Becerra came in with Congresswoman Titus and spoke about the rising healthcare costs, particularly in terms of prescription drugs, that office worked with Linda for soapbox, and together, we presented, through a lot of hard work from Linda and her team, a tremendous opportunity for our members with the mayoral forum with both candidates just before the Election. Other Other activities we do. We cross promote with the rest of the university as part of the rebel engagement brigade, where we go out and promote Olli, as well as other other community facing programs. And we bring in traditional UNLV undergraduate and graduate students to learn with our members. Work with our members, particularly the from the School of Nursing, the Department of Physical Therapy and the occupational therapy programs, both at UNLV, as well as occupational therapy at Toro University of Nevada, to come in and work with our members and and have a lot of collaborative experiences.
Keith McMillen 14:19
That's fantastic, in fact, to get that information out to our membership, just to even make them aware that those things are available. Because sometimes it's hard to find out this stuff
Robert Levrant 14:29
it is. And a couple of things that we're doing is we're trying to really emphasize the there's so much going on that sometimes our members can't keep track or or our newsletter has gotten so long, they'll often miss it. So we will put out from time to time, separate from our E newsletter, just a monthly Hey, this is what we have coming in January. This is what we have coming in February. So, so next fall, when we're doing the. Art Walk, which is another great collaboration with the College of Fine Arts. We had Olli art instructors doing demonstrations on their techniques. We had Olli artwork displayed both our belly dance and ukulele groups performed at the event. But we'll want to make sure that that's highlighted and promoted to Olli members, to potential Olli members, and to the university at large, so they can know to look for us there at these events.
Keith McMillen 15:27
I have been surprised in the past, going to different things on main campus that a lot of people aren't aware of Olli, and I try and inform them whenever I can, so that's one of the reasons I'm sitting here right now, but you mentioned art and music, which are other topics that we cover, and maybe in the future, on these podcasts, we'll talk about that, because we got great programs on art appreciation, actual activities, learning how to do Various kinds of art projects. It's fantastic. It's wonderful. Going forward, now we have a new facility. We have great technology. Where do you think we're going to go in the next couple of years?
Linda Edgeworth 16:14
Well, one of the things as a member, and not part of is the staff or from the university, but just as a member, I think one of the features that we see expanding is some of our social engagement activities. We have a movie night where people can come in and just socially engage. We have a Mahjong club where every Friday afternoon, they sit in the coffee room and play mahjong together. We have book clubs both. We've had book clubs, not only on fictional books, but also on non fiction books. So I think the expansion of those social engagement programs are also really important to our members. And we've we've been able to arrange bus trips to Legion stadium for football games or hockey game, where we even had a, what do you call it a tailgate? Tailgate party? Yes, for before we went, we went to the games. And we also have arrangements for sometimes discounted tickets at Smith Center. So it's more than just the educational programs, and when you teach 100 courses a semester, you're going to have a huge variety. And so I think it's really important for maybe listeners to understand that, not just for themselves, but maybe they know a retired neighbor who is a little lost encourage them to look through the catalog, because they might find something that they would really enjoy, and the cost is really incredibly low for what members get, who they sign up for a year. And so it's, it's, it's very, very productive program. It's fun, but a lot of people are also finding they're making new friends, and for people like me who moved to a new community because of family circumstances I didn't know anyone, what an outlet of these vibrant, interesting people from all backgrounds and and for people who've retired or maybe who've lost a spouse and are suddenly feeling very isolated and alone. So it's just a wonderful program, and it's year long every semester that this university has, Olli has and it's a wonderful way to stay engaged, learn new things, meet friends, make new friends, socialize together. So I think that's really important for any audience or anyone who is not familiar with the Olli program to understand and it's all with UNLV.
Keith McMillen 18:44
Yes, yes. I know you mentioned we have over 100 classes available. They will be starting at the beginning of February, and the semester runs for 10 weeks, and it covers the gamut. We've got history, we've got art, we've got music, we've got movies, we've got, if you can think of a topic. I mean, we're doing one on Houdini, the magician. Another very popular class deals with musical theater. And in fact, those people frequently make a field trip to New York. That's extra cost. That's not on us. But yeah, one of the, again, a very popular class, so and ukulele you mentioned at one point. I remember that class was very hard to get into. It was always full. It
Robert Levrant 19:31
was we part of the problem. I hate to say it's a problem. It's we have so much going on that that it's sometimes hard. One of the number one complaints we hear is more than I want to take more than one class at the same time, or if this class has so many people in it, then we don't have that bigger room for another class. It could also just as easily have that many people so. So we do have to balance our resources, balance our offerings, move things around. So you would ask, what's in the future, and part of that is having more hybrid options. So not sure it would work with Ukulele, per se, but, but we could expand our our capacity for how many people can enroll in soapbox, because some people could, could watch from home it, and we're looking at some of our other activities to having more available online. The truth is, oftentimes our members move away from Las Vegas or feel less comfortable driving themselves and can't get to campuses often. So by having these online options, it really extends the amount, the length of time that people can remain engaged in. Olli, yes,
Keith McMillen 20:48
fantastic. Now, you had also mentioned the special interest groups. You had mentioned a couple of them. We call them SIGs, special interest groups. We're big on duress. Yes, exactly. These are organized activities, either in our building or in other parts of the valley. They're not classes for which you register, and they are very wide ranging. Every month on the third Friday, usually I host a movie in one of our classrooms. It can be relatively new or a classic. In this month, in fact, we're showing in January Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane. In the future, we have on the lineup, singing in the rain, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and West Side Story, the original movie. Popcorn is provided, and we always have an interesting discussion about our impressions of the movie. And sometimes I might have an inside story about how it was made. Some people don't realize that when Citizen Kane first came out, it was a box office flop. It was only later people realized, well, how exciting it was. So if you're interested in exploring the great outdoors, whether you're up for an easy stroll or maybe a moderate challenge, we got a hiking group for you going out in the fresh air see some scenic views and great company. Some of the past hikes have included the Historic Railroad trails down in Henderson, gone through Springs Preserve, Sunset Park. More to come every month, if you'd prefer to sit and read. We've got an online book club once a month on Zoom. They'll get together to discuss a novel. In February, they'll be discussing the Crime Thriller Dead simple by Peter James. Later, they're going to look at magic and Shinigami and the Shinigami detective by honor raconteur, and finally, elephants can remember by Agatha Christie. Now, if you would prefer to write as opposed to read, we've got an in person writing critique group that is starting up. They will meet every Tuesday on campus. But critiques are no blood on the floor. These are positive critiquing, helpful reviews and a chance to share and improve your writing. So as you've heard, there's a lot going on at Ollie. We've talked about soapbox some of our collaborative ventures in health and well being, and a group of very special activities, everything designed to keep you as a retired or semi retired individual, physically and mentally as active as you wish to be. Listen to next month, and we'll have even more. Thank you. Thanks for listening to focus on Olli. There are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Ollie O L, L, i.unlv.edu You may also email us at Olli, at UNLV. That's Ollie O L, L, I, A, T, UNLV at sign unlv.edu You can also just give us a call at 702-895-3394, Monday through Friday, between the hours of eight and five. Except, of course, on university holidays, you.