Paul Rohloff’s teaching career was grounded in math and science. Today his outlook is more ethereal as he leads a lively discussion of angels, those immortal beings attendant to God, and whether their existence can be proved.
“Scientists look for hard evidence. Theologians rely on faith,” said Rohloff, 72, of Palos Heights. “And the philosopher tries to reconcile both,” interrupts his wife, Florence.
The class breaks into laughter. It’s one of the first really beautiful days of spring, and Rohloff, his wife and about two dozen other retired people are closeted in a stuffy classroom at St. Xavier University, 3700 W. 103rd St., Chicago. The halls outside are quiet; the undergraduates and their professors are gone on spring break.
But not the members of the Renaissance Academy. These senior citizens bustle through the hallways, toting notepads and books, ignoring the sudden arrival of warm weather on a recent Tuesday afternoon. A fever that has little to do with season grips them; it is a craving for knowledge that drives this group.
The Renaissance Academy attempts to meet the needs of those who want to fill their leisure time with more than brunches and bingo. The academy was the first Institute for Learning in Retirement in the Chicago area. Founded in 1990, the Renaissance Academy at St. Xavier is part of a loosely affiliated group of institutes sponsored by Elderhostel, a Boston-based non-profit group whose mission is to provide educational experiences for retired people.
According to Jim Verschueren, director of the Elderhostel Institute Network, the first ILRs were created in 1988. There are now 143 such groups, serving more than 25,000 people across the country, including two groups sponsored by Northwestern University, one at its Evanston campus, the other downtown.
Oak Lawn resident Eleanor Zayner, 72, was the driving force behind the formation of the Renaissance Academy. According to Verschueren, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland was among the first universities to sponsor an ILR.
“I had friends in Baltimore who wrote such ecstatic letters,” Zayner said. “And I was sitting here wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”
So Zayner, who describes herself as the timid type, screwed up her courage and marched over to St. Xavier, where she asked school officials if they would help her start up a similar program.
“It was a fateful moment,” said Pat Monaghan, the university’s director of continuing education. “Eleanor came in and started talking, and I asked her if by chance she was from the College of Notre Dame.”
Monaghan already had heard the news from Baltimore and was researching the project; in fact, she had board approval to set up an ILR at St. Xavier. The Renaissance Academy “fits in perfectly with the university’s mission,” Monaghan said. “The hunger for learning never goes away.
“What appealed to me was that it was a peer education program. It was self-empowering,” she added. “These are people who want to learn.”
In addition to Rohloff’s class on “The Angels and Us,” facilitator Irv Doucet and students watch a tape on pre-Socratic philosophers. And almost 50 students are crammed into a third classroom watching a film, “Iphengenia,” by director Michael Caccoyanis in Sally Links’ “Movies as Art Form” class.
“We don’t require a degree or professional experience” to be involved in the program, said Charles Mueller, a retired high school physics teacher and the academy’s current president, a volunteer position. “We have people from all walks of life here. No one’s working toward their Ph.D.”
Academy members choose their fellow students as facilitators, and guest speakers are invited to address the classes. “We’ve been fortunate to find members willing to teach classes,” Mueller said.
This semester, classes offered include “Behind the Headlines”; “Ireland, Then and Now”; “Effective Money Management”; “Great Books”; “Women’s Studies”; and “T’ai Chi.”
“It is not the blind leading the blind,” Mueller said as he shuffled class schedules on his desk, which is tucked into an unused storage room at St. Xavier. “We have people here who are really well-versed in a particular subject. I taught physics, but what do I know about Aristotle or Plato?”
That’s the bailiwick of Doucet, 65, of Chicago’s Southwest Side. An engineer by trade, he is also an expert in the “Great Books” as outlined by educator and philosopher Mortimer Adler. “When I graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology, my father gave me a gift of the Great Books. I’ve been attempting to read them over the last 40 years,” Doucet said.
He is also leading a class on the books, many of which deal with complex philosophical and theological issues. “It’s not highly structured. People can relax a bit,” Doucet said.
“The idea here is that people have finished working and they’d like to go back to school, not for a degree, but to keep their minds active,” Mueller said. “They want intellectual pursuits without worrying about exams, grades or a lot of homework.”
Rohloff agreed in principle. “There are no grades, no tests,” he said of his class. “But I do give out reading assignments.”
The students can delve as deeply into a particular area as they want, and participation is up to the individual.
“Some like to participate in class discussions. Others would rather listen and absorb,” Mueller said.
Marie Walsh, 67, lives on Chicago’s Southwest Side. A retired college administrator, Walsh leads a class on Irish history after having taken several other classes through the academy. “I do it because it’s fun. And you even learn a little something,” she said.
Facilitating a class helps members to open up to new ideas. “It doesn’t matter what your professional or business background is. Each of us knows something no one else knows,” she said. Her class, “Ireland: Then and Now,” is based on Walsh’s many visits to the island.
One hundred and fifty people are enrolled in the Renaissance Academy, up from just 20 or so members in 1990. Classes are held twice a week for eight weeks rather than in concentrated one- to two-week blocks on a university campus, as is done at some other locations.
The Renaissance Academy offers three sessions each year and usually up to a dozen classes each session. The cost is $150 for the entire year, and that entitles members to take four classes each session. Academy members also can use the St. Xavier library and are currently working with university faculty to set up an intergenerational program. St. Xavier contributes to the program by providing classroom space.
“There is a respect for the older students, and some of the younger students have even told their parents about the program,” Mueller said. “We want to find more ways to work with the rest of the student body.”
“The program grew very fast. It was clear people wanted something like this,” Monaghan said. “At first, students asked, `Who are these people?’ Now it’s not unusual to see two, three tables of white-haired people sitting in the cafeteria.”
Bill Murphy, 69, a resident of Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood, said a friend told him about the academy. “I sat in on a couple of sessions and I found it interesting, relaxing and stimulating,” he said.
The ILRs offer non-credit, daytime classes. Retired people can, if they wish, audit regular college classes at no cost, but the ILR offers a chance for community in addition to intellectual interplay.
“Sure, they could take a class on an audit basis. But they are not with their peers. They have to take what is available (when they audit a class), and the classes are not structured to make it easy to be involved,” Verschueren said.
The desire to learn is paramount, but a sense of community and camaraderie is one of the side effects, Zayner said. “That’s why I insisted on breaks (during classes) for coffee or to just buzz around in the hall for half an hour.”
And the group has other plans. Its motto, “Make No Small Plans,” is a paraphase of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham’s famous quote and is living up to its meaning. Zayner said the academy has begun visiting seniors in nursing homes, and is considering a tutoring program for St. Xavier’s younger students. It is a trend that is occuring at ILRs across the country, Verschueren said.
“Our members began to look outward,” he said. “They want to know what they can do to better their community.”
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For more information on the Renaissance Academy, call St. Xavier’s at 312-779-3300.
