Osher classes for the fall 2022 semester began a few weeks ago.
The deadline for course proposals for the upcoming spring semester was last week – September 21, 2022.
The spring catalog will come out later this fall.
In order to schedule courses for Spring semester (in terms of both time and location), the planning has to start early. The scheduling of Osher classes is handled by the college administration; they schedule undergraduate and graduate classes first, and then provide us with the rooms we need at the times we need them as they can fit in around the college schedule. I get that. But it means that we have to let them know what we want a few months before the semester begins.
Here's what this looks like from an instructor’s point of view. I’m teaching two courses this semester, but they’re not scheduled until later in the fall – one in October and one in November. I chose those times specifically because I knew I was going to be out of town for most of September. But I’m planning to teach two courses in the spring as well. One will be a repeat of a course I’m teaching this semester, and one will be a new course. The course that I’m repeating is the one I won’t teach until November, and it’s a little challenging to commit to repeating a course before I know how well it was received the first time. In addition, I’ll need to spend a lot of time in the next few months working on the new class I’m teaching. On the course proposal form I submitted for the new class, I said I was available only late in the spring semester. I have a lot of work to do.
Here's what this looks like from the point of view of a member of the Curriculum Committee. I’m responsible for the American History instructors in our program, and I have to review the course proposals that are submitted by these instructors before we commit to scheduling them for next semester. In most cases, that’s not a problem – I know most of the instructors and their courses will be fine. But I have two new instructors on my list this semester, and I needed to pay a little more attention to their proposals to make sure they’re on track.
This task was a little more complicated this month because I was out of town for three weeks – which happened to be the last three weeks of the course submission window for next semester. The Osher staff routinely forwarded proposals to me while I was away, and it wasn’t hard to find time to take a look at them while I was traveling. I knew that the staff and other members of the Curriculum Committee were ready to help out if a proposal needed tweaking, but that didn’t happen.
By the time the course proposal window closed last week, we had received 91 proposals. This is lower than what we had for this fall, but we know that the spring semester historically has fewer course offerings than the fall. The number for next spring is also considerably lower than the number of courses we taught pre-COVID. Along with most similar programs across the country, the Osher program at William and Mary has had some difficulty building back up to pre-COVID numbers. We are focusing on recruiting more instructors and on encouraging our current inactive instructors to submit course proposals for upcoming semesters.
Our most popular subject area is (not surprisingly, given where we live) American History, with 23 course offerings. World History is the next most popular subject, with 11 course offerings. The rest of the courses are scattered among Arts and Music, Technology, Religion and Philosophy, Natural Science, Literature, World Languages, Health and Wellness, General Studies, Finance, Computer Technology, and General Studies (which includes courses on baseball, pet adoption, genealogy, and the death of Marilyn Monroe).
This program gives my brain a regular workout and keeps me connected to lively and interesting people in my community. It’s one of my favorite retirement activities.
Nice! Thanks!!