Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at USM

44 Bedford Street, Wishcamper Center, Room 210

usm.maine.edu/osher-lifelong-learning-institute/

You’ve probably heard of The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (affectionately known as OLLI)—a national program that offers noncredit courses in the liberal arts and sciences, with no assignments or grades, to adults over age 50. OLLI is big; in 2025, there are active programs at more than 120 university and college campuses across the country, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

What you might not know is that OLLI was established in 2001 right here in Portland. Why? As one historian put it, “Maine’s population has been getting older, if not wiser, for decades. Young people leave, retirees arrive.” In the mid-1990s, Rabbi Harry Sky, recently retired from TBE (Stop W02), approached Richard Pattenaude, then president of USM, with the suggestion of providing adult non-credit education for Maine’s large population of seniors. One outcome was the founding of the Senior College at the University of Southern Maine in 1997. This model was quickly taken up at the state level with the support of the governor, Angus King.

The concept of the Senior College was to “provide a curriculum of intellectually stimulating learning opportunities and special activities for persons 55 years or older …. regardless of educational background.” The classes were also taught by other senior citizens. “We (senior citizens) didn’t fit in,” recalled Sky of his Senior College experiences. “We were not undergraduates and we did not follow a curriculum. Over time we worked out a modus vivendi. No one told us what we could and what we could not teach, and our offerings covered a wide range of topics. Nobody censored us.”

Sky, who became chair of the Senior College advisory board, sought out partnerships and funding for the endeavor, and decided to approach Bernard Osher, one of his past TBE congregants, for support. Bernard, a successful banker, art collector, and philanthropist, was known for his generous patronage of higher education and the arts. A sibling of Harold Osher (Stop W07), Bernard was also from Biddeford, and his early career was managing his parents’ hardware store in Biddeford and a fun park in Old Orchard Beach. Though Bernard ultimately made San Francisco his adopted home, he maintained a lifelong commitment to his native Maine. After the Bernard Osher Foundation endowed USM’s Senior College, it was renamed the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in recognition of his philanthropy. The Osher National Resource Center, which is charged with ensuring the OLLI programs are connecting, collaborating and sharing learning to sustain its mission, was based at the University of Southern Maine for a decade (2004 - 2014). It is now is based at Northwestern University in Chicago.