Current Classes | Senior College

Spring Semester Classes

Spring classes are set to begin on Monday, March 10th with Monday Morning Lectures beginning that day as well! Registration begins on February 23rd at 2:00 pm.

Monday Morning Lectures

Spend your Monday Mornings exercising your mind. All Monday Morning Lectures (MML) will be on Monday at 9:30 am at the Kearney Public Library.

Starting March 10th and continuing every Monday morning through April 14th we will present a special lecture on a unique topic of interest. There are two options for registration - pre-registration through the Senior College website for the entire series OR pay at the door (cash/check/credit card) for each individual lecture. The Lectures are open to Senior College members and their guests.

Click here to download the list and descriptions of Monday Morning Lectures.

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Stories from the History of Medicine: Superstitions to Modern Practice

Modern medicine has many diagnostic and treatment tools that appear miraculous and would be even more amazing for a physician who practiced 100 to 200 years ago. How did this happen? The road to medical discoveries in the last three centuries includes stories of exceptional persistence, creative approaches, and personal risk, even self-experimentation. Bill will present a selection of stories of the taming of diseases like anthrax, rabies, yellow fever, choler, malaria and more.

Engaging Your Aging Brain

Engaging your brain as you age contributes to joy, peace and fulfillment. Throughout our lives the brain slows down, but we can counteract the progressive mental decline that everyone experiences. We will look at simple ways to exercise our brains at any time during the day. Laughter supports brain health, so we’ll have lots of fun as we discover how to give our brains a daily tune-up. Join us for some engaging brain work!

Class size limited to 35.

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Contested Ground: Women's Sports Around the World

“Contested Ground” will survey episodes of girls’ and women’s pathbreaking entrance into various sports around the globe. From “traditional” or “feminine” sports such as gymnastics that test the boundaries of body physiology to “rough” or “masculine” sports like soccer or boxing, women have proven time and again that they are not only capable of competing----but they are able to meet or even surpass their male counterparts. Politics, medical pseudoscience, religion, and more have stymied women’s entrance into the sports around the world, but women continue to break barriers and prove that sport is more than a game!

Maps and Mapping: How We Know Where Stuff Is

So, you think you know where you are...and where your stuff is? Come find out for sure! From lines drawn in dust to satellite images of your backyard, maps guide us across the globe. History records the “what” of it and Maps record the “where” of it. You can draw your map on the palm of your hand or fill a wall with lines, colors, and pictures that guide you on your way. Once we depended on the stars to guide us. Now we depend on GPS (Global Positioning System) on our cellphones to keep us from getting lost. Come along for an exciting ride!

If You Build It, They MAY Come: Thrills and Chills in the Local Economic Development Efforts

This course begins with the famous “bathtub analogy” to explain local economic development, and then moves to a discussion of various incentive strategies that were popular in the past. Armed with that knowledge, we will look at a new set of community strategies that have emerged since “Field of Dreams” gave us the famous line, “If you build it, they will come.” Join us for an entertaining and enlightening experience!

TED Visits AI

Have you ever used AI (Artificial Intelligence)? Are you willing to, afraid to, or don’t even know what it is? This session will utilize TED Talks to enlighten and entertain us with the current thinking about AI. (“TED is a non-profit that believes powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us to feel something, to think differently, to take action” – TED) We will watch a TED Talk and then have a class discussion about the topic of the presentation. Come be a part of this interesting, exciting, maybe even a little scary time in our lives.

Class size limited to 16.

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