Member Spotlight

As a retired nurse with a Ph.D. in physiology and more than 40 years of teaching experience, I had a lot of plans when I retired in 2018. I wanted to travel, learn to play the trombone, make jewelry, and do some volunteer work. My first year went well, and I made some progress in all of these areas. But then my trombone teacher passed away, I had all the jewelry that I could possibly use, and the volunteering opportunities were a big disappointment.

Carmen Turner 

Student, Volunteer, Classroom aide 

Member since 2018

Attending OLLI since 2018 has enhanced my day-to-day living experience, garnered friendships, and allowed me to satisfy my curiosity about philosophies that intrigued me.

I began attending OLLI at UNLV classes right after moving here in 2015. We moved here to be closer to our daughter and her family in LA and to get away from the snow in Michigan—our long-time home state. 

A friend of my wife’s has lived here for over 50 years and has been attending OLLI for many of them and mentioned the OLLI program to my wife. We were immediately interested, as this would give us a chance to meet people and learn at the same time. 

I attended OLLI at UNLV classes for about two years before I began instructing mathematics classes. I “discovered” OLLI at UNLV when a spokesman came to my synagogue in Henderson to introduce the seniors at the luncheon to lifelong learning at OLLI at UNLV for retired and semi-retired people living in Las Vegas and Henderson, NV. This sounded perfect to me, to continue learning at a college but not matriculating for another degree, but just to “learn for learning’s sake—no homework, no tests nor quizzes nor essays. Just perfect!

Students, Volunteers, Committee Members, Instructors

Members since 2018

Newly snowbirding to Las Vegas, in 2017, we were investigating things to do. We then found OLLI listed on the web and thought it would be a fun way to learn new things and meet people and we definitely were not wrong!

“So you know, the bottom line is OLLI is a fundamental part of our life, you know, when people ask us, ‘Well, what do you do with your time? I think the first thing that comes to mind is we're involved with OLLI. It's really a fundamental part of every week. Even when there's no semester, we're thinking about it, you know, it's really what we think about and what we do.” The Orts are longtime members of OLLI – nine years for Ed and six for Rita – who really exemplify the way to get the most out of our learning community.

Following my career in community mental health and a post-retirement coda teaching over 150 college and university courses, the prospect of retiring was daunting. I wanted to keep on helping people and I hadn’t yet had my fill of teaching. OLLI became a viable option to volunteer and to teach. Retirement fulfilled.

I first learned about OLLI from a friend in an organization that I volunteered with who is also from Hawaii like me, and I joined OLLI five years ago. Then two years later, we faced the pandemic, but we didn’t really miss a beat because we have the Zoom virtual learning.

Around five months after losing my wife, I was spending time at a senior center and my friend Dawn told me about OLLI. She said that I would really enjoy it, and she was absolutely right. I wasn’t so sure at first when she was telling me about it, but Dawn told me that I could sit in on a class or two. Once, I did, I realized this is really good. Someone suggested that I sit in on Fred Peters’ class on NASA, but I didn’t really think I would be interested in science. But guess what? After sitting in on the one, I haven’t missed his class since!

When I retired in 2017 and moved to Vegas to be near family, I didn’t know anyone. I started going to Meetup lunches and happened to meet someone who regularly attended OLLI. I had actually attended OLLI events through Cal State University Monterey Bay, so I was excited to find a program here at UNLV.