 organizations and events with the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. As a disclaimer, any views or opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and not connected with any organization. Joining me in the studio today to kick off the new year and the new decade, even though I know it's not technically the new decade, it feels like one because it's a 2020, is Carol Mandrick, director of OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Welcome to the show today and thanks so much for being my guest. It's a pleasure to have you here. Oh, it's great to be here. So if I may, I'd just like to read a little bit about your background. You're a former dean at Harvard University. You're an award-winning instructor in anthropology, and this is your fourth year serving as the director of the OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute at UH Manoa. You've got over 30 years of experience as a teacher, researcher and administrator at universities and colleges across the US and Canada, including here at UH Manoa Departments of Anthropology and Geography. So in 2016, you came over to this program. So were you at the Department of Anthropology and Geography right before that when you came over and this opportunity came up? No, I wasn't. It's a pretty complicated, long story, but I'm one of those people who bounces back and forth between mainland and Hawaii. And I actually was at Anthropology and Geography from 2005 to 2009. Then I was in Virginia at George Mason, then I was in Colorado, and then I came back here. That is quite a bit of bouncing around and quite a difference from Colorado to here. So your educational background was you got your bachelors in anthropology in Beloit College, and then your master's in anthropology and museum studies at George Washington University, which must have been a very interesting course. And then your PhD in Quaternary Studies at the University of Alberta. What is Quaternary Studies and what did you do your thesis on just sounding curiosity? So Quaternary Studies is basically the last two million years. So it's everything in the last two million years. But my interest was paleo environments, but paleo environments that relate to humans. So sometimes people will say, don't you want to do environments about the dinosaurs? And I'm like, if there weren't people there, I'm not interested. So my dissertation was evaluating the viability of the ice recorder, which is a theoretical way that people could have migrated from Asia into the new world, conveniently right through Western Canada and determining when and if people could have come. So it required reconstructing environments, geology, I cored lakes and do vegetation, and then a whole bunch of math to figure out if people could have lived there. And of course, anthropology, because I was in an anthropology department. Okay. So it's really interesting background that you've had yourself. And then so you were Colorado right before this. And I know Rebecca Goodman preceded you in this role as director because I've been taking classes at OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute for a number of years. And then after she left, then obviously the position was becoming open to transfer over. And how did you hear about it? And what made you interested in taking this job? Well, you know, I'd been trying to come back to Hawaii. And so I'd been looking for jobs either at UH or a Bishop Museum. That was kind of things that would appeal to me. And this job was advertised. And luckily, this is when Becky was still here when she was getting ready to retire. So I interviewed with her and met her and knew right away that this would just be perfect for me. And that's how it happened. And I know that it has been just by seeing all the wonderful offerings that's blossomed since you've been there as well. And for the folks now that don't know what is Ole or OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute, tell us about the background of this program and what's its purpose. Okay, so first of all, this particular program here at UH started in 1996. And back then it was called Adult Lifelong Learning. And it was started by Becky Goodman and Abe Arkoff and a bunch of other elders on the campus who wanted to have an adult lifelong learning program. Now, about 10 years after that, there was this wonderful person, Mr. Osher, who was in Maine, Bernard Osher is his name, and he lucked upon a lifelong learning program at the University of Southern Maine that he was just really impressed with. And he thought, boy, it would be great to make this kind of thing available to more people. And so basically what he's done, he was very successful at making money and wanted to do good things with this money. And he started giving small grants, and then endowments to a number of different institutions to have lifelong learning programs for people over the age of 30. That's the deadline, I mean, the age that they use. And some alleys, so we, you know, we say alley instead of OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute all the time. Some alleys applied to OSHA to create program, and others were pre existing programs that applied for the endowment. And so that's what happened with the one from the University of Hawaii. So Becky and the other people working with her were able to get a series of $100,000 grants in 2003, 2004. And then in 2006, they got a million dollar endowment in 2007, they had a second million dollar endowment. And so that's one reason why this gets to do so much, you know, we get a payout from the endowment each year, except apparently in 2008. And, and that's part of an important part of our funding. And the charge is to offer courses for seniors that and you know, we try to avoid seniors with seasoned learners, older adults, but to offer courses that enrich, you know, you cognitively they're interesting, maybe it's things you wanted to take in college and you never got to but not just the classes, not just the cognitive engagement, but providing a place where you're engaging socially with other people with peers. And you say it's a come for the come for the courses state for the friends or what's your slogan that you know? Yeah, yeah. So there's 124 alleys around the country now. And, and they we all share best practices. And it was one of the other alleys that had that phrase. And I just love it, because that's that's really what happens. And people come and they meet people. And then they end up the next semester planning their courses together, you know, they're going to go take classes together, share rides, etc. Now you're located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. And we'll show a map later on. But if folks want to follow along, and they want to go to your website, so they can see what we're talking about, what is the website? Should they just Google OSHA lifelong learning Hawaii? That will get them there? Or what's your specific website? Well, Googling Googling OSHA and University of Hawaii will get them there. I'm always Googling it because I'm too lazy to put in the wedding. And I'll, I'll frequently just do OLLI Hawaii. Okay. And I do OSHA Manoa. So it all pops up at the top there. But if folks that want to come along. Now you say courses and but it's more than just courses. And what are we looking at here? Is there some requirement to get in some testing, something that you have to do to get in? Or how does that work? The only requirement is that you're at least 50 years old, and you're curious and you want to learn, you know, so there's no education requirements. There's no other requirements. There's another program on campus like a Puna program that requires a TB test. We don't require a TB test. I don't know why they do and we don't. You don't have to be a Hawaii resident to come to us. You know, some programs you need to be Hawaii resident. Basically, you just need to be interested and come interested and come and there's a ton of different classes which we'll get back to there in a little bit. But you know, I think I got in when I was under 50. Is that possible for some people to sneak under the radar? It happens on occasion. Okay, but just generally speaking, there's no grades. There's no test. There's no pressure. That's one of the things we like to say there's no test. There's no grades. We can sort of say there's no homework, although in certain classes, there's definitely homework, you know, in the literature class, you need to read a chapter so you're not going to have fun in the conversation. But but there's no actual homework. And there's definitely no tests into grades, no grades. So you're definitely learning for the thrill of learning. Learning for the thrill of learning. I love that because it does stress that the lifelong learning, this is not just something I tell younger people, they think, Oh, I'm done with college. I'm graduating. I was like, no, that's a commencement commencement ceremony means beginning not ending. So you are, you're, you're still going to continue on and whatever you have to do, whether it's professionally and taking your continuing education courses, or learning how to better yourself as a human being or just these courses where you where you stay intellectually stimulated, but there's other classes than just intellectual stimulation. For example, some art classes or some physical classes, or classes where we learn how to literally move our bodies in ways that I took a class last term that was that was like that where a lady was teaching us literally looking at our walk. How were we walking? And was that beneficial for our bodies and our structures? And was it, could it be improved upon? It was really interesting to see the results up to just one class. And you think I've been walking out my life, but here this structure came in and there was one particular lady who had been barely able to walk into the class, honestly. And by the end of the class, she says, I haven't stood up and walked like this in years. And I was astounded by that, not that that's the thrust of the programs, but it's a variety. Right, we have a wide variety of classes. Now, I greatly increased the number of course offerings. When I came in, there were 10 to 12 a semester. And now we have, well, this semester, we have 80. Okay, that doesn't mean we have 80 classes, because we have what we call courses, which are things that need more than twice. And then we have what we call special events, but maybe we should just call single lectures or something. So we like this semester, we have about 32 of those. And the courses really vary and how long they are. But, but, but if I just think of the topic areas, like we have classes in art and art history, we have film, music and theater, the category you were just talking about, we have this category called wellness, health, fitness and exercise. Now, that could mean a whole bit of different things that could include meditation, include Tai Chi, we have Tai Chi every semester. Now, only about 25% of our classes repeat every semester. Most of our things are new every time. And the most popular topics in our age group and our demographics seem to be history, film, politics, a certain amount of art, I'm trying to get in more art, because I like art, trying to get in more science, because I do science. But there's always been a little bit of all of those things. And so people go online, they can find our course catalog for the semester. And on page 24 and 25 of the course catalog, it lists all the courses by topic, you know, so it'll say, okay, here's the science stuff, here's the multidisciplinary stuff. And different alleys might specialize a little bit in certain kinds of classes, although I think we all try to be a bit reflective. But I know that some people think, oh, we should have just, you know, the hoity-toity kind of classes. But but I figure we should just have a little bit of everything. You know, there's there's some people who think a certain kind of climate change class is going to have too much science in it. But we try to make everything accessible. And so that you can deal with a difficult subject at a simpler kind of level. And we talked to instructors about things like that. So one person was teaching physics. And after the first class, I said, let's think about how we can get all those concepts across with less math. But other classes, you know, we want them like we're going to have a history of mathematics class this semester. But the idea is there's so many classes that you can choose the type and kinds that you want. And as many of the same type are not that you want. In fact, I think that this semester, which hasn't started yet, it's going to start next week, if I'm correct. Yes, and plenty of time for people to still sign up for a lot of classes. The number of a class of fellow students in the class. Are we talking hundreds of people or dozens or how many is in typical class? How many are in a typical class? In a classroom. Okay, so is that like 25 people? It's not 600 like in a lecture hall for a beginning sociologist? We currently have three classrooms in Crow's Hall. One only sits 10 people. One sits 25 to 35 and one maxes out at 35. So we have one room that's for lectures and films, one room that has this giant conference table. Yeah, so so you would have it most 35 other people with you. Sometimes we use some of the other rooms around here. If we have a really, really popular talk, we might be in a room that that fits 60 people. But most of the classes you're talking about 20 people or less. And that's why you meet people and you have conversations. Exactly. And would you say that the average person, let's see, when you sign up for classes, you can sign up for three courses and then an unlimited number of sort of special events. Is that how it works? Okay, here's how it works. When I came in some old timers told me, and I don't mean like old people, I mean people who have been members for a long time, that they didn't necessarily like the first come first served thing, that if they didn't get in here quick enough and talk to Becky quick enough, they didn't get into a class. So I researched what other alleys did and I initiated this priority kind of system. So you're allowed to take at least three classes and at least three special events. But on the registration form, and this is whether it's the online one or in person, I asked you to put down five choices and number them 12345. And pretty much, you'll probably get your first three choices, except certain choices, okay, hiking, life writing, certain art classes, they fill up really fast. And I tell people, if you have your heart set on those, you have to put number one. If you don't put number one for hiking, you're not going to get it. Then we wait list you for the other classes you're interested in. And a week before each class starts, because that's the other important thing, our classes don't all start on Tuesday or Wednesday, our classes staggered through the semester. So a week before each class starts, we let you know if you got into a wait list in course. So it's space available. It's at least three and then space available. So are you sending out those course notifications of who got into what class today or tomorrow or something like that? You know, I was hoping to send them out today, but we had a glitch with our registration. More important, you had your think tech interviews. Okay, so we'll wait with that. I did actually. I finally got a directed registration this morning. So we're going to get on that. Okay, and I did sign up for the history of mathematics course. So I hope I do get into that because it looked really interesting and something that I would never taken as a young person. Now, we have get to some more logistics and some specific classes that we might be looking at. But right here we got to take a quick break. So we will come back in about a minute. I'm Winston Welch. This is out and about on the think tech live streaming network series and we are delighted to talk with Carol Mandrick, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. So stay tuned. We'll be back in a minute for more of the story. Hi, I am Yukari Kunisue, host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, think tech Hawaii's Japanese program, broadcasting every Monday from 2 p.m. I usually invite a guest in Japanese language community. That's an interesting thing. And I'd like to share stories with you guys. Please tune in and listen to Konnichiwa Hawaii. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktechawai.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Follow us. And I'm Winston Welch on Out and About on the think tech live streaming network series. Talking today with Carol Mandrick, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Thanks so much again for being here today, Carol. I know it's a busy week for you. You've got the courses coming out next week and the entire university is starting up as well right now. We were talking about your really interesting and varied background and how you where you went for your Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, how you bounced around from a few different campuses and that's probably been a lot of really good grist for the mill for this particular job that you've had for the last four years. Is it now that you've been there? I'm on the fourth year, so three and a half years. Okay. And you know this the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is primarily, as we were saying, for 50 and better, although sometimes some youngsters will slip in there. And it's just a place where you can come and enrich your mind, have engaging support of social environment, make new friends, and just stay connected to the community, which is so important now as we're getting more and more fragmented. And I think that, you know, on one of my other shows, we were talking about diseases of despair. And this is one way to overcome that. But you got to get up and go out to these courses so people can go online to Osher, they could just Google Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Hawaii or Manoa or any of those combination of words and they'll come up and they'll be able to see the course offerings that you have this this term. And they're not all that's not that they meet every Tuesday at nine for 12 weeks or 15 weeks. It may be that they meet every fourth Tuesday or on Saturday mornings, or three times or twice in March or April. Is that right? So they could just be here and there and some are longer, some are shorter and some are one offs. First, I want to say something to something you just said about the diseases. Sure. This this program is definitely like an anecdote to loneliness. Okay, so let's just say that part that's great for that. Now the way our courses work is summer four weeks long, summer six, summer eight, we have a couple that go all 12 weeks of the semester, but we stagger them throughout the semester and we find that a lot of our members might be people who travel or you know, some people live here part of the year on the mainland part of the year. And it works that they're able to find classes that work for them, no matter which part of the semester they're here. So you don't need to be tied here for an entire semester to take classes. Okay. Generally classes meet once a week. We don't have Saturday classes, but we do have a number of Sunday classes now since parking's free on Sundays and we're trying to take a manage of that. That's a great idea. I you had your open house yesterday and I thought oh parking's free on Sunday that was that was nice just to be able to drive and park on the campus easily without paying the five bucks. But there's of course shuttles and you could ride your bike or walk and a lot of different things. It's right at UH Manoa across from the parking structure, the law library as it were in Krause Hall and we'll show a map of that here in a minute. But so they the classes meet about is it one or two hours or something like that for class typically? They're typically a class is two hours long summer one and a half hours. One's where they show films might be three hours, but most of the classes, there's a break in the middle. You know, it's not like you're stuck sitting there the whole day. Okay, and we had a. I took a class the last it seemed it was like part one, part two, part three. It was the most interesting class that I had taken in. It was Supreme Court cases, religion and Supreme Court cases and instructor was just absolutely fabulous. And she's a typical instructor. I think that you have it. Oh, where do you find your instructors? How do you get them to teach the classes? Can we teach classes if we want to? How do you how do you find all these classes? Okay, that's such an exciting question. Okay, first of all, I find instructors everywhere. I send out an appeal to everybody I know and everybody that I know and any of the Kapuna networks here, saying, you know, we're looking for instructors and I do that once a semester. I also, you know, I overhear people talking in coffee shops and I said, Oh, can you teach that? You know, I get a lot of people that way. I'll see articles in the star advertiser or things in the UH 101 News. And I'm like, can you come and talk to us about that? And oh, can you maybe talk four times? But also, we're always encouraging our members to teach. And what I like to say to all of your viewers is you don't have to have been a professor to be an instructor here. It depends on like, what is your passion? And I love the example that one of our most popular Shakespeare and classical literature teachers was an attorney. That's what his job was. And one person who does travel logs was a CPA. You know, you could have done one thing and had a passion in something else. And this gives you the opportunity to learn more about that and teach that passion. I love that because it's not only that you get to be the learner, but you can also be the teacher and share, you know, the class that I had with religion and the Supreme Court cases. We would get briefs that we would read beforehand and and then just have discussions in the classroom. And it was just it was a stimulating, fun, interesting environment with people who are interested. And yet there's no pressure to to have a test or something afterwards. And I have just found it an incredibly enriching experience. And I wonder what I might teach. But there's probably we all have a lot of things that we could teach. And I know you actually teach a couple classes there too on it was baking, wasn't it? And some other your foodie. Interesting, because I come up with all these great ideas. And then sometimes I can't find people to teach them. But I want to teach them. And that's one of the best parts of this job is that I get to do that. It's like, hey, I can teach whatever I want. Right. So I did have this class called food for thought. And it was about it started being about, you know, connections between food and memory and emotion and family and all that kind of stuff. And we would talk about food memories and things our parents had made. And we'd talk about recipes and people would bring food in. And it was supposed to last one semester, but the people wanted it to never stop. So we do that every semester. Also, you know, I worked on climate change stuff. I've done climate change things. We had a climate change climate disruption series last summer. And just makes me really happy to focus on something like that. I used to spend inordinate amount of hours walking diamondhead beach. And I've had a couple field trips where I call it the landscape history of diamondhead beach and just explain why it looks the way that it looks and what you can see about former sea levels there and things like that. And even things like why is that a good beach for sea glass? I love those kind of things. And, you know, I'm no longer apologetic about the fact that I can be sciencey and artsy. And I've had classes in furniture refinishing and covering seats and knitting because knitting is good for your brain. And when we are doing the climate disruption thing, we made our own beeswax wraps. We've done tie dye shirts. So I have to like tell myself, Carol, you know more classes because you have stuff to do, but just think if there's anything you ever wanted to teach, you can teach it if you have time to. Okay, and we got a couple slides here just to show some other ideas of what we got at the besides those wonderful examples that you mentioned, and that's just from one wonderful teacher. But so we got a maybe on slide number two, we've got a try pick here, which shows on I guess it's on the viewer's left, there's a looks like a group in Machu Picchu and another group around a table. And then the third one looks like it's it is that a submarine and it's maybe a field trip. Right. And so the one on the left, that's Machu Picchu. And that was a trip they took quite some time ago. But what's interesting about that is time shear and lend that trip. Now we haven't had an official travel program. But this year we do again, and we're going to have a trip to Spain and Portugal in April. And Tom Sheeran is going to be the resident instructor who goes along on that trip. I'm not sure what they were doing in that middle photo, but that is our good great seminar room. And that's a table we inherited from a wonderful office downtown. And I think the field trip was when they went to see some of the UH research submersibles. Okay, so we do have a lot of fields. Just a lot of really interesting things like that. And like there's a travel log for people that may not be able to go along. I noticed one of the classes with Tom was teaching where he shows you about trips that he's taken. So maybe as to what your appetite or just to enjoy as an armchair traveler. We've got another slide here. So it's a sort of a breadth and depth of type of class that you might have here was fall of 2018. Slum and influence on the Renaissance. Really just, yeah, examples of the kind of classes that we do. And that's like our history type of class. And that's Tom Klobe and he's great. We're trying to get him back to teach another class because we're going to put right now. And we got another one here. This is like the restless earth the first 4 billion years. So something also very different classes, art classes. These take place in Kraus Hall, which is a beautiful little duck pond area right outside the classroom. So that's looking straight on is if people were let's see that is looking diamond head, I guess. And the bulk of the campus is to the left to the right is Dole Street, which you can't see because this is an enclosed courtyard. But Dole Street is right there. And then the the law library is there. So on the next map, you can see there's Kraus Hall almost right in the middle there next to Sakamaki Hall and across from the parking structure. So really encourage viewers to go online, Google OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Hawaii, Manoa or any combination of those words will be able to see what you've got there. We unfortunately are out of time. I hope that you will come back again and be a guest and talk more about this wonderful program or something else that you would like to talk about of interest to you. So thank you so much for being here, Carol, and I and I'm sorry, but we are out of time and we have to wrap it up. It has been my great pleasure to be talking with Carol Mandrick, director of the OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I am Winston Welch. This is out and about on the ThinkTech live streaming network series. And you can catch us here every other Monday at three o'clock. I'd like to thank our broadcast engineer, Robert McLean, Haley Ikeda, who put things together for us technically and for J. Fidel, our executive producer who conceived of this and is behind all of this effort, as well as Carol. Carol, what's Carol's last name? Yeah, anyway, she's not you, not you Carol, the other Carol that sponsors this one. Anyway, thanks so much, folks, and we look forward to seeing you the next time. Thank you, Carol.