Bradley’s Life-Long Learning Program Receives $100,000 Grant
By Debbie Adlof | 28th July 2008
Bradley University’s lifelong learning program has been awarded $100,000 by The Bernard Osher Foundation to expand programs for mature adults. As a result of the grant, the Bradley University Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR), now in its 14th year, will be renamed the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. “Our ILR has great potential for growth to satisfy the emerging learning needs of the aging population in our area,” said Jon C. Neidy, associate director of Continuing Education at Bradley. “The creation of an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Bradley will enable us to expand the breadth and depth of our programming.” The ILR is a collaboration between Bradley and more than 600 members, who together create a learning community that evolves from and is sustained by members’ educational interests and social needs.
The grant from the Osher Foundation will fund marketing efforts, additional staffing, and new programs for current and new members. New program efforts will focus on study groups, active learning trips, a retirement weekend, and expanded intergenerational programs with Bradley students. The Bernard Osher Foundation, a 30-year-old philanthropic organization headquartered in San Francisco, supports higher education and the arts. Post-secondary scholarships are provided to selected institutions nationally, with a recent emphasis on meeting the needs of reentry and community college students. The Foundation supports a growing national network of lifelong learning institutes for seasoned adults located at 121 colleges and universities from Maine to Hawaii. The Foundation also funds integrative medicine centers at Harvard University, the University of California, San Francisco, and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden as well as a career development awards program at NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Arts grants, generally made to organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and the State of Maine, seek to bring new and younger audiences to classical music and the performing arts. Bradley is one of only three Illinois universities supported by the Osher Foundation’s Lifelong Learning Institutes. Other OLLI programs are at Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.