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OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE

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  • Issues in Our Region's Natural and Human History – Online
  • Item Number: S25HIST317
    Dates: 5/13/2025 - 6/3/2025
    Times: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
    Days: Tu
    Sessions: 4
    Maximum Enrollment:  299
    Seats Available:  215
    Building: Online
    Room: (Zoom)
    Instructor: Jeff LaLande
    This new course will deal with selected topics in our region’s natural history and human history. It will include presentations that the instructor has not given in any of his previous OLLI classes, although all of them have been given at various non-OLLI venues. The topics include: 1) geological history and environmental character of the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon and northwestern California; 2) anthropogenic fire in our region: the role of indigenous peoples (in the various forest-types that were present here prior to white settlement); 3) the history and consequences of 20th-century fire management in Oregon; 4) hydrology and environmental history of Bear Creek; and 5) the history of the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps (with a focus on southwestern Oregon). The instructor will provide a list of suggested reading; no prior knowledge is required. Interactive lecture will be followed by Q&A and focused discussion.
 

  • The Range of Light – In-Person
  • Item Number: S25HIST320M
    Dates: 5/7/2025 - 5/28/2025
    Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    Days: W
    Sessions: 4
    Maximum Enrollment:  50
    Seats Available:  22
    Building: Rogue Valley Manor, Skyline Plaza
    Room: 1 Skyline Drive, Medford
    Instructor: John Schuyler
    From afar, the Spanish conquerors of the 18th century saw them as a snowy mountain range. Up closer, John Muir coined the phrase “The Range of Light,” which has endured. Whether comprised of snow or light, the Sierra Nevada Mountains are the backbone of California in many ways. They are also a barrier — capturing moisture coming from the Pacific, but also a barrier to pioneers coming from the east. The mountains provide the state with most of its water. They are key to outdoor recreation, including attractions such as Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe. They played a key role in providing the lumber used to build much of the nation’s most populated state. This course looks at the geography, natural history, human history and challenges facing the single largest mountain range in the Lower 48. “The Gentle Wilderness” is now plagued by overcrowding, dying trees and unwanted wildfires. What does the future hold? Classes will include lectures, slides, videos and time for discussions.
 

  • Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution? – In-Person
  • Item Number: S25HIST319A
    Dates: 3/31/2025 - 5/12/2025
    Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
    Days: M
    Sessions: 7
    Maximum Enrollment:  30
    Building: Campbell Center
    Room: Room C
    Instructor: Fernando Gapasin
    Registration for this course is closed. 
    This will be an opportunity to experience the people and events that legally abolished slavery and boldly attempted to change a social structure from one based on white supremacy to one grounded in interracial democracy. Archival data, biographies and historical analysis from different schools of thought will be used to examine significant events. Classes will encourage discussion about the impact that Reconstruction had on shaping how the U.S. defines itself today. There are no prerequisites. Brief biographical summaries of significant framers of Reconstruction will be provided. Important definitions of terms and analysis of events will be reviewed in class. For participants who wish to look deeper, bibliographical information for lectures will be available to all, and many of the readings will be made available to loan. The course is intended to describe and examine Reconstruction from the Civil War until the Compromise of 1877.
 

  • The Evolution of Federal Public Lands Management – In-Person
  • Item Number: S25HIST110M
    Dates: 4/3/2025 - 5/15/2025
    Times: 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
    Days: Th
    Sessions: 7
    Maximum Enrollment:  32
    Building: Medford Higher Education Center
    Room: Room 118
    Instructor: Don Barry
    Registration for this course is closed. 
    This seven-lecture course will review this country’s federal land management policies from the Revolutionary War to the present. It will cover the constitutional basis for federal land ownership and demonstrate how for the first 100 years, the divestiture of our publicly owned lands was this country’s top priority. The subsequent emergence of a public land conservation movement and the creation of the National Park, Wildlife Refuge and Forest systems will be traced. Focus will include the management of the Wildlife Refuge and National Park systems, including a look at the Everglades, Yosemite and Yellowstone, with an eminent guest lecturer. The course will also focus on the establishment of more than 100 million acres of new conservation areas in Alaska, as well as the old-growth forest battles in the Northwest. There will be no assigned reading and no prior knowledge/skill sets will be required. The course will involve a mixture of lectures and class discussions.
 

  • The Gettysburg Campaign 2.0 – In-Person
  • Item Number: S25HIST306A
    Dates: 4/15/2025 - 5/20/2025
    Times: 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
    Days: Tu
    Sessions: 6
    Maximum Enrollment:  34
    Building: Campbell Center
    Room: Room A
    Instructor: James Cannon
    Registration for this course is closed. 
    This course examines the Gettysburg Campaign of June and July of 1863. The overarching goal  is to show how several rapid and critical battlefield decisions likely made the difference between victory and defeat for the Union Army. The course will be divided into six sessions. The early sessions will cover the causes and conditions that led to the Civil War and the state of the war in 1863. The other sessions will progress sequentially through each day’s fighting and how the decisions made one day set the stage for the next day of fighting. Two classes have been added to the previous course on the Gettysburg campaign to allow for additional materials about the second and third days’ battles; chapters concerning the life of the ordinary soldier; battlefield medicine; and what happened after the Civil War to 13 notable participants. Time for questions is included in each session.
 

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