Osher News - May 2018

May 2018

New Lecture Added for May 17

From Hate to Hope: The Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial

In the early hours of May 9, 2017, hate walked into the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. It came in the form of words that were both vicious and vile, attacking members of our community. It caused the national media to call, asking, "does this define Idaho?" This lecture will explore what was, what is, and what will be, the story and messaging of the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. This world-class educational park, which has been profiled in several national publications including the National Geographic book, Etched in Stone: Enduring Words from Our Nation's Monuments , is the only Anne Frank Memorial in the United States and one of the few places in the world where the full Universal Declaration of Human Rights is on public display. Join us to learn more about this remarkable local memorial.

Presenter: Dan Prinzing, Executive Director, Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, Boise State University

Date and time: Thu., May 17, 10 a.m.-noon

Visit the Osher Registration Website to register online. You can also register by phone by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

Fall 2018 Catalog is Coming This Month!

The new fall catalog will arrive in mailboxes in mid-May. In it, you will find a diverse list of high-quality and stimulating lectures, courses, special events, and a new category of programming—seminars and workshops!

Seminars and workshops will feature learning opportunities that differ from the standard Osher lecture and short course formats. They are for members interested in taking a deeper dive into the subject matter, typically through reading and class discussion led by the instructor. Seminars and workshops will tend to have smaller enrollments, possibly more sessions, and higher enrollment fees.

Please note: Due to limited capacity, we anticipate these seminars and workshops will fill quickly. We apologize if you are unable to enroll, but encourage you to get on the waitlist so we can determine interest in these opportunities for future planning.

Some highlights this fall include lectures on artificial intelligence (AI), critically endangered vultures of Gorongosa National Park, and Burning Man. Short courses will feature composers Chopin and Bernstein, a tour of the atom, the Russian intelligentsia, China, climate change, and marginalia in medieval art. Seminars and workshops will range from writing to a discussion on the First and Second Amendments.

Thank you in advance for renewing your membership and for your participation and support of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Boise State University.

Important Registration Information

Get a head start on the registration process! Memberships for the 2018-2019 year are now available for purchase on the Osher Registration Website or by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

If you plan to register online and haven't logged in to your account in a while, you may want to do so before registration begins to make sure your password is correct and that you won't have any problems on registration day. If you have questions or need assistance, please call Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

Registration dates for the fall semester:

Tuesday, June 5, 8 a.m.— online and paper registration opens
Wednesday, June 6, 8 a.m.— phone registration opens

There are three ways to register for the fall semester:

Online: This is the preferred method of registration. Register online beginning Tuesday, June 5, 8 a.m. by visiting osher.boisestate.edu and clicking on "Member Registration and Log On." If you are a new member, click on "Become a Member."

Paper: Paper registrations will be processed beginning Tuesday, June 5, at 8 a.m. in the order in which they are received. Mail in or drop off your registration form as soon as you receive your catalog. Mail to: Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, 220 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise, ID, 83706

Phone: You may phone in your registration beginning Wednesday, June 6, at 8 a.m. by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

Get on the waitlist! All offerings are filled on a first-come, first-served basis, and some fill quickly on registration day. If an offering is full, we encourage you to add yourself to the waitlist, as there is significant movement on waitlists throughout the semester. You will not be charged for waitlisted offerings until you have been successfully enrolled. When possible, we will repeat offerings to meet demand.

Online Registration Tutorial Sessions

Want to register online but aren't sure how? Osher Institute staff are collaborating with our Customer Services team to present online registration tutorial sessions. There will be two opportunities for members to come to the Yanke Building, learn about the registration process, and get hands-on practice.

Two separate sessions will be offered, and the same information will be offered at each session. Please attend whichever works with your schedule.

Session One: Tuesday, May 22, 10 a.m.-noon

Session Two: Wednesday, May 23, 10 a.m.-noon

No registration is necessary for these tutorial sessions.

Spring Social Reminder

We hope you will join us for this annual event to socialize, meet our new Advisory Board members, thank our many volunteers, and get a copy of the new fall catalog, hot off the presses!

Cost: Free. Bring a friend! Registration is required for members.

Date and time: Tue., May 15, 2-4 p.m.

Location: Simplot Ballroom, Boise State Student Union Building

Please remember to wear your name badge and register by Friday, May 11. Visit the Osher Registration Website to register online. You can also register by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

Thank You, April Volunteers

There would be no Osher Institute without help from our wonderful volunteers. Thank you to the following members who volunteered during the month of April:

Allie Gooding, Martha Hays, Steve Fields, Buddy Howell, Steve Ahrens, Ed Bracht, Sally Sherman, Mary Lou Taylor, Darlene Stattner, Alberta Woodall, Zoe Strite, Judy Thompson, Marilyn Floyd, Mark Eubank, Candy Miller, Elizabeth Greene, and Gary Wyke for greeting members and assisting with wayfinding at courses and lectures.

Thank you, too, to the Nominating Committee, Ben Simko, Jo Anne Minnick, Rick Ogle, Sheri Robison, and Nancy Roehrkasse, for interviewing and nominating our new Advisory Board members;

the Faculty Grant Committee, Rick Ogle, Linda Hurlbutt, Sheri Robison, Patty Toney, Wally Smith, and Ben Simko, for reading grant proposals and selecting our 2018 Osher Faculty Grant recipients;

and Walt Thode, Barbara Olic-Hamilton, and Merilee Marsh for their keen proofreading eyes on our fall 2018 catalog draft. We couldn't do it without you!

Meet Our New Advisory Board Members

Chuck Folkner received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Mexico and his master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wyoming. He worked at the Hanford Nuclear Site managing nuclear waste and as a civilian Nuclear Engineer at the U.S. Navy’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. At the Shipyard, Chuck was assigned to automate the process of managing radiation dosimeters, despite being unqualified for the job. He continued to take on computer-related work, spending less time at his nuclear engineering desk, and after several years he was transferred to the computing department. In 1997, he was offered a job at the then-relatively-small Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle. With the exception of a brief stint at a dot com internet startup, he spent the rest of his working career at Starbucks in coffee business computing. In 2012, he retired and joined his brother, sister, and mom in decidedly sunnier Boise, where he travels, walks the dog, and completes the occasional home project. Chuck chairs the Track 2 Curriculum Committee and has also taught for the Osher Institute on more than one occasion, leading members through topics including the history of coffee, Mars, autonomous vehicles, and Thomas Friedman's book, Thank You for Being Late .

Virginia Rivers grew up in a family of fishermen and hunters, thus cultivating her appreciation of nature. She earned her bachelor's degree in Biology and her master's degree in Biological Sciences with an Ecology emphasis. With those degrees in hand, Virginia taught environmental science and biology at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, for 25 years. After retiring with Professor Emerita status, Virginia moved to Boise to be closer to her niece. She discovered the Osher Institute in spring of 2016, and finds that it fulfills her desire to contribute to the community, stay mentally engaged, and just have fun! Virginia is an active volunteer in Monarch butterfly conservation and has been involved with Monarch tagging research to determine migration corridors of western populations. She has been an avid nature photographer for the past 30 years, with works published in popular nature calendars and online. Learning about, and photographing, Idaho's wild places is one of her favorite pastimes.

Dennis Hall moved to Boise from Billings, Montana, in October 2016. Shortly after moving, Dennis and his wife, Robyn Butler-Hall, were introduced to the Osher Institute by their new neighbors. They joined Osher in spring of 2017 and say that it's one of the many things they love about Boise. Dennis has two sons and daughters-in-law and four grandchildren, half each in Seattle and Boise. Prior to his retirement, Dennis was an investment advisor for over 25 years. Most of his previous volunteer activity has concerned youth, education, and public radio, and he has since become involved with Boise State Public Radio and the Armenians of Idaho. He is looking forward to serving on the Osher Advisory Board.

Osher Faculty Grant Recipients

This year, the Osher Institute Faculty Grant Committee has awarded $15,000 to help fund three faculty research projects. The 2018 grant recipients and their projects were selected from applications from tenured and tenure-track faculty across disciplines. Over the past seven years, the Osher Institute has awarded $100,500 in grants to Boise State Faculty.

The Faculty Grant was established by the Osher Institute Advisory Board as a way to support Boise State faculty and help raise awareness of the Osher Institute within the university. Annual member contributions to the Osher Excellence Fund help to make the grant possible. Thank you, Osher members!

The 2018 Osher Faculty Grant recipients are:

"Design-Based Research Using VEO: Helping Idaho K-12 Foreign Language Teachers Align to New State Standards"

Kelly Arispe, Department of World Languages

In February 2018, the Idaho State Board approved the revised Idaho Standards for World Language Teachers. Most notably, it will require that K-12 foreign language teachers not only understand but also implement a communicative and proficiency based approach to language teaching that integrates performance measures aligned to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

The new standards go into effect on July 1, 2018. Idaho schools then will have a two-year grace period to implement them in their classrooms. Arispe's two-year research project is designed to mitigate the professional development and curriculum materials "gap" for Idaho teachers.

The project uses a state-of-the-art VEO, video enhanced observation, technology to digitally tag classroom observations of master teachers (i.e., best practices). The materials will be available for other foreign language teachers through an open-sourced digital archive to help them improve their own teaching techniques and align with the new standards.

"Linked Campus-Foothills Outdoor Facility"

Jim McNamara, Department of Geosciences

The Department of Geosciences has run the Dry Creek Experimental Watershed, a laboratory for research and education in watershed sciences, for around two decades. McNamara estimates that data from the lab has informed around 50 student theses and dissertations during those years.

"Now that we have so much data, we're turning toward educational outreach," said McNamara. The Osher grant will help maintain instruments at the lab, improve the lab's website to make data more available, create online educational activities, and help support other projects, including building a field site behind the lab with meteorological stations, interpretive signs, and more.

"Northern Paiute Oral History from Harney Valley, Eastern Oregon"

Tim Thornes, English Department

This grant will help Thornes prepare portions of an extensive body of oral history narratives in Northern Paiute, a critically endangered language, for publication.

Thornes worked with tribal members in Oregon to record, transcribe, and translate the narratives based on interviews with elder speakers of the language.

"Most of the work was done sitting around a kitchen table drinking coffee and with occasional visits from curious grandchildren, whose generation are not speakers," said Thornes. Most speakers, he said, are in their 50s or older.

Since his interviews, Thornes has stayed in touch with families of his interviewees, including a grandson of one speaker. The grandon, said Thornes, wants to learn enough Northern Paiute to pass it on to his own grandchildren.

Thornes' body of work will serve both the discipline of linguistics and the heritage language community by providing natural speech data from an understudied and endangered language, "and, more crucially," Thornes added, "will provide a window into the history of extreme social and cultural transformation from the perspective of the community that experienced it."

Thank You for Your Annual Support

Thank you for remembering the Excellence Fund when renewing your membership for the coming year. Supporting the Excellence Fund helps ensure our ability to bring you the best in lifelong learning by providing interesting and diverse programming presented by top-notch university and community experts. It helps us recognize and attract Boise State faculty through the Faculty Grant program, provide member scholarships, and it makes us stronger financially to meet operational challenges and opportunities as they arise.

Our calendar year goal for 2018 is to raise $25,000, $7,500 of which has already been received or pledged! If you are a previous donor, we hope you will renew your support for the Excellence Fund. If you have never donated before, please consider making a first-time gift to this important fund. Gifts of any amount make a difference.

Ways to donate to the Osher Excellence Fund:

Add a donation on your registration form or when registering online
Make a gift securely online through the Boise State University Foundation by visiting the Osher website and clicking on the "Make a Donation" link
Send a check made out to the Osher Excellence Fund c/o the Boise State University Foundation at 2225 University Dr., Boise, ID, 83706
Fill out and return the donation card that will be mailed to members in June

Financial Scholarships Available

The Osher Institute believes that the opportunity to take classes and participate in the rich intellectual life of this Institute should be available to those who are qualified. To reach this goal, we have made a limited number of financial scholarships available each year.

A financial scholarship provides:

A waiver of membership fee but all the benefits of membership
Half-priced discount on up to three fee-based offerings per semester, based on availability

Please note: Scholarships are not available for fee-based special events and trips.

If you or someone you know could benefit from this opportunity, we encourage you or them to apply for an Osher Institute Financial Scholarship. Applications will be accepted year round but expire at the end of each fiscal year (June 30).

Additional information and the application are available on the Osher website or by calling the Osher office at (208) 426-6554.

In the Spotlight

Every month, Osher News highlights offerings that still have space available for members to enroll. The following courses take place during the month of May:

Stress and Resilience

We all encounter stress in our lives, but we can often find ways to cope. Where do we seek support when our stress feels overwhelming? What promotes resilience in the face of stress? This course will draw upon existing research to understand how stress impacts our physical, emotional, and relational well-being. We will examine coping strategies and other supports that have been shown to promote resilience to stress, and will discuss a research project about stress and resilience among refugee youth and their families as they resettle in Boise. Finally, we will explore ways in which we can provide support to our neighbors and loved ones.

Presenter: Dr. April Masarik, 2017 Osher Faculty Grant winner and Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Boise State University

Dates and times: Wed., May 9, 16, and 23, 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Cost: $35

Visit the Osher Registration Website to register online. You can also register by phone by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

The Evolution of Journalism

This course will focus on the history and significance of, and threats to, journalism in the U.S. The first class will trace the origins of journalism from the Colonial period to the Muckrakers at the turn of the 20th century. We will look at the role of the press in the American Revolution, how the Civil War indelibly changed the practices of journalists, and the growth of mass media in the late 19th century. We will continue with the remarkable accomplishments of Progressive era journalists and photojournalists whose work alerted the public to issues of corruption, child labor practices, monopolies, and urban crime. The second class will focus on how we “got to now” and look at the challenges and meaning of journalism in the digital era.

Presenter: Alan Minskoff, Director of Journalism Minor, The College of Idaho

Dates and times: Tue., May 22 and 29, 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Cost: $25

Visit the Osher Registration Website to register online. You can also register by phone by calling Customer Services at (208) 426-1709.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Boise State University

Phone: (208) 426-OLLI (6554)

Email: osher@boisestate.edu

Website: osher.boisestate.edu

Boise State's Osher Institute operates within the Division of Extended Studies. It is a membership-based lifelong learning program offering non-credit, college-level short courses, lectures, and unique learning opportunities for intellectually curious adults over age 50.

Osher Institute Advisory Board

Susan Gibson | Mary Lou Kinney | Merilee Marsh | Mike Merz | Jo Anne Minnick

Gary Robb | Sheri Robison | Nancy Roehrkasse | Ben Simko

Osher Institute Staff

Director: Rosemary Reinhardt | Program Coordinator: Jamie Lundergreen

Assistant Program Coordinator: Holly Goldgrabe | Student Assistant: Alyssa Schnell

Like us on Facebook