By Terry Oparka
C & G Staff Writer

Royal Oak resident and former high school art teacher Peter Mangiaracina, 85, attends class at Oakland Community College four mornings per week.

He has registered for Charlie Blosser’s ceramics class at OCC every semester for more than 20 years.

Mangiaracina, an accomplished sculptor and watercolor painter, wanted to branch out when he retired from Royal Oak Public Schools.

“I didn’t want to just sit,” he said.

He’s not alone.

While 1 percent of the total student body at OCC is older than 60, in Blosser’s class, that number is 10 percent.

“The students work really hard here and become good potters,” Blosser said. OCC, like other local colleges, offers senior citizens a 20 percent discount on college classes.

In an effort to expand and diversify the student base, Oakland University in Rochester decided this past fall to offer a 50 percent discount on credit courses to students 60 and older.

This past fall, the university also allowed senior citizens to sit in on classes for no credit free of charge, but this is currently under review, according to university spokesman Dave Groves.

Groves said the senior students audit classes “across the curriculum.”

In Macomb County, Macomb Community College gives county residents over age 60 a 10-percent break on tuition for college courses and fees, as well as for tickets for programs at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts. 

Each year, the college offers two free program series centered on a particular theme at the Lorenzo Cultural Center. MCC spokesman Dan Heaton said the program is very popular with local senior citizens.

Following the theme of life in Detroit during the Great Depression, the current series explores the era’s arts, sports, films, economy, civil rights and Prohibition in a program at the center titled “And Still They Prospered: Living Through the Great Depression.”

At the Adult Learning Institute on the Orchard Ridge Campus of OCC, seniors expand their knowledge in diverse subject areas, said Carol Penrose, ALI curriculum director.

For a membership fee of $100 each fall or spring, people 50 and older may attend unlimited classes and lectures at ALI; however, there are additional fees for some events. About 200 seniors sign up each term.

And forget about fluff.

Stand-alone lecture topics with noted experts include: “Michigan Soldiers Stranded in Russia After World War I,” “Art of the Third Reich,” “Current Film Art,” “Re-urbanization and Downsizing of Detroit,” “The Mystery of the Dark Matter in the Universe,” “Arts and Medicine,” “Demographic Trends and the Census” and “Sex Differences: What Traffic Fatalities Say About Nurture Versus Nature.”

“And there’s no homework required,” Penrose said.

ALI lecturers earn no fee. Instead, ALI makes a donation of up to $1,000 to the charity of the speaker’s choice.

A number of musical and dance groups will perform at the Smith Theatre at the Orchard Ridge campus through the ALI program this year, including the Dave Bennett Quartet, the Paul Keller Quartet, the Detroit Dance Collective and Bill Meyer.

“The musical programs are very popular,” Penrose said. 

At Wayne State University, students 60 and older receive a 75 percent discount off the regular tuition rates, excluding the schools of law and medicine.

Each fall and spring, the Society of Active Retirees, a community-based initiative of WSU and Elderhostel Institute Network, offers a series of non-credit courses and programs for adults. Many of the courses are taught by WSU faculty. Subjects range from art to architecture, health to history and science to sports, and include film, genealogy, literature, anthropology and politics.

Most SOAR classes are offered at the WSU Oakland Center in Farmington Hills. The membership fee this past fall to attend eight programs was $70.

Mangiaracina said he likes the flexibility of his ceramics class at OCC with regard to meeting times, as well as the variety of people. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it,” he said.  “It helps me maintain my sanity and a certain interest in life. The whole thing to realize — if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

For more information, visit www.oaklandcc.edu, www.lorenzoculturalcenter.com or www.educationaloutreach.wayne.edu/SOAR/.