BY ARIEL MARTINO

In print | Published January 22, 2009

Catering to alumni and interested members of the Swarthmore community, the Lifelong Learning program is now in its seventh year of offering classes to alumni, their family and friends.

Classes are taught in biology, physics, economics, history, political science, art history, literature and classics. The program expanded in 2004 to offer courses in New York City, in addition to those available on-campus, to reach a broader base of alumni.

Gil Rose, a Lippincott Professor Emeritus of Modern and Classical Languages, began the program in 2002 in an effort to “extend [Swarthmore’s] educational reach.” He strongly believed that Swarthmore College could act as a beacon both to Philadelphia-area alumni and engaged community members.

The program offers two and a half hours seminar-style classes once a week, for eight weeks. Classes, which are kept small, are filled on a first-come, first-served basis and are open to any interested student. Each course is taught by senior or emeriti faculty, and no grades or credit are given for coursework. It is, as Rose intended it to be, learning for learning’s sake.

Amy Vollmer, a biology professor, taught a class in the spring of 2006 at Swarthmore and another class in the spring of 2008 in New York. Her class was entitled, “Why We Get Sick … Or Not” and covered bacteria, viruses, antibiotics and the immune system. Vollmer characterized her class as “very diverse — young and older alums, men and women, professionals and stay-at-home folks.”
Vollmer set out several goals, including promoting scientific literacy and conveying how the immune system works. She believed that her students surpassed these goals. “Some were science-phobic, but that didn’t last long, they were terrifically engaged and I am still on e-mail with many of them; they send me items from The New York Times and other publications. It is a great group.”

Mark Kuperberg, a professor of economics, taught a class this past fall entitled “Self-Interest in Society.” While it was not his first time teaching a Lifelong Learning class, with 20 students enrolled, it was his largest class.

Although Kuperberg was just as pleased as Vollmer with his students’ level of enthusiasm, he cautioned that “Given that almost all of them are working full time, you need to keep the readings a little light and not expect everyone to do the homework.”

Vollmer said, “The only complaint I got was that I didn’t assign enough reading — only at Swarthmore would you ever get a complaint like that.”

Given the elective nature of these courses, it is especially important to keep students engaged and interested in the material without overwhelming them with too much work. “It is important to make the course interesting to ‘adults’ who are out in the real world and to be realistic about what you can expect of them,” Kuperberg said.

So far the program has attracted an enormous base of committed and involved students. In 2006, there were more students than the program had room for. This semester there will be three classes offered on Swarthmore’s campus: “The US Presidency,” taught by Professor of Political Science Rick Valelly; “Mathematics in Nature and Human Experience,” taught by Professor of Mathematics Deb Bergstrand; and “Making Trouble: the Modernist Revolution,” taught by Professor of English Literature Phillip Weinstein. In addition, two classes will be taught in New York: “Living Lightly on the Earth,” taught by Professor of Engineering Carr Everbach, and “The Russian Short Story” taught by Professor Emeritus Thompson Bradley, formerly of the Russian department.

Rose hopes to keep expanding the course offerings in the future so that no student should have to be turned down because of space constraints. “Practically without exception the students and the faculty in LLS have found the courses tremendously stimulating and great fun,” Rose said.

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