“I retired from the University of Utah in 2008 and the next year I started teaching Russian literature courses as part of the U’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which provides educational opportunities for adults ages 50 and older. The institute provides a special opportunity for community members to delve into studying something they may have wanted to learn more about but never had the time to study before.

Teaching with Osher is a different classroom experience than teaching an undergraduate course. In the Osher courses, people are so interested and so vocal and so into the class. The give and take between the professor and students in these courses is more extensive than in an ordinary undergraduate honors class. In those courses, everybody is very smart, but nobody says much. The students are more into soaking up the material and preparing to write good papers, do well on their exams, and get a good grade in the class. In Osher courses, there are no papers, grades or tests and so people are really focused on classroom participation.

When I taught younger college students, it was easy to rely on the teaching perspectives I had developed over the years because my students were unlikely to challenge me. In the Osher classes, I have participants sparring with me at times. Often, they bring up perspectives that I have never thought of before. The learning experience in these classes is a two-way street. This is what a great Socratic discussion is supposed to do—both sides take away something from the interaction.

In Osher classes, participants bring their life experience into the course in a way 18- and 19-year-old students just can’t. Sometimes, we leave the novel we are discussing altogether and apply what is happening in the text to the lives that have been lived by the people in the room. They share how it relates to what they have experienced and what they have done in their lives. It’s extraordinarily interesting in terms of the novel and the lives of the students themselves.”

— Gene Fitzgerald, a U professor emeritus and long-time Osher instructor