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As Ara Rogers Prepares To Retire, We Look Back On Her Remarkable Career
After 21 years of leading OLLI-USF, Ara Rogers will retire at the end of this year, leaving behind a vibrant organization with numerous classes and social events, scores of volunteers involved in its operations, and the widespread admiration and respect of the community.
It’s a much different organization from when Ara first took on its reins.
In the beginning, there was no OLLI.
Ara’s first encounter with the organization occurred in 1994, shortly after it was established at USF as the Division of Senior Programs under the direction of Lee Leavengood. The program had two parts: the Senior Net program, which provided computer training; and Learning In Retirement, which had a more academic focus. Ara worked part time in the LIR program while completing a master’s degree in adult education.
After earning her degree, Ara took a job as a Medicare educator for Blue Cross, Blue Shield. But in 2001, just as Ara was looking for a new professional path, Lee began preparations to move on.
Leading the program was a perfect fit, Ara says. “I didn’t want to work in the insurance industry anymore, but I wanted to continue working with the education of older adults,” she says.
On a most auspicious day -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- Ara became USF’s interim coordinator of senior programs. It was a small program, almost an afterthought of the university. There was one room at the university for computer classes, and LIR classes met at the new College of Public Health. So only a few courses could be offered to its 300 or so members each semester.
The program’s existence was also tenuous. Funding and its place at USF were continuously called into question.
Then in 2005, Ara got a phone call.
“It was from a young man who said he was a researcher. It turned out he was assistant to the president of the Bernard Osher Foundation. They were quietly setting up lifelong learning programs and wanted to grow a national network,” Ara says.
Would she be interested in participating?, she was asked.
Four years later, financed with two consecutive annual $100,00 grants followed by two consecutive $1 million endowed gifts, OLLI-USF was well on its way to becoming a thriving educational organization for seniors.
“That was one of the greatest things Ara ever did," says Joseph McAuliffe. "She did all the work, all the arranging and setting up of our relationship with the Osher Institute.”
Joseph, a former pastor who had been working in a temporary position for LIR, was the first to be hired full-time after the conversion to OLLI. As the new educational program manager, Joseph was charged with developing the arts and sciences programs. He worked alongside several staffers who managed the former division of senior program’s technology training.
“Ara hired me, and that was the beginning of what turned out to be a wonderful professional and personal relationship,” Joseph says.
“When I first came here, educational planning was not part of my background,” he says. “Ara was my trainer. And once she trained me, she let me do what needed to be done.”
The OLLI designation and funding has enabled Ara to add more fulltime staff positions since hiring Joseph. Staff members now also include Operations Program Manager Cath Mason; Jeanne Dyer, head of technology training; Charise Dixie, in charge of registration; and part-timer Mary Ettinger, in charge of program support and the OLLI calendar.
The designation also enabled Ara to grow a program with just a few classrooms and a handful of instructors into an educational force. Today, OLLI-USF offers more than 100 classes taught by over 100 instructors at 16 different locations in addition to Zoom every semester.
Tapping Into Talents
It’s a matter of choosing the right people for the job and then empowering them to do it. That is very much Ara’s style, even with the volunteers who help keep OLLI’s wheels turning
Board of Advisors Chairman Mike Viren is a retired mechanical engineer and economist. When OLLI needed a new registration system, Ara turned to Mike and Bruce Gobioff, an expert in technology management, to work on the project with OLLI staff.
“Ara figured out who would be needed and then let us do what we do best,” Mike says.
The result was Lumens, a much more user-friendly system tailored specifically to OLLI’s registration requirements.
Saving OLLI
Mike also credits Ara with keeping OLLI-USF going when the pandemic struck in early 2020. As in-person classes were shutting down and SIG meetings were being cancelled, Ara tapped into the membership’s technology experts to keep it going. The result was a rapid and highly successful conversion to classes on Zoom.
“She deserves the accolades for keeping the organization going,” Mike says. “We lost a lot of members during the pandemic, but because we had so many technically qualified volunteers, we were able to adapt quickly to Zoom. So we had fewer members, but the members were taking more courses, which kept our revenue up.”
“She absolutely saved the life of OLLI during the pandemic by being so astute and just pivoting into the tech world,” says Jane Applegate, retired Dean of Education and an OLLI Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Assisting Instructors
Jane experienced firsthand Ara’s ability to quickly pivot to address problems.
It happened in 2015, Jane recalls: “I had taken a class that was just not very good, and I thought that the director of the program ought to know about it. So I went to the OLLI office and stopped by to see her.
“She just listened, as she always does, and said, ‘How would you like to work with me to help develop a better experience for the faculty?’” Jane says.
Out of that conversation the Faculty Support Team and the class A Course is Born: From Concept to Classroom were created to help OLLI instructors develop and enhance their teaching abilities and techniques. Until recently, Jane and Ara taught that class together every spring. That job has now been turned over to other instructors.
Turning Over The Reins
As Ara prepares to turn over OLLI’s reins to her successor, Veronica Maxwell, she can look back at OLLI’s many successes: hundreds of high-quality courses, close to 200 volunteers who teach classes, serve on committees, and provide support for the staff, over a dozen Shared Interest Groups, and more than a thousand members.
And while she’s looking forward to a retirement filled with travel, spending more time with her three granddaughters, and other leisurely pursuits, she’s feeling a bit nostalgic.
“I know I’ll miss OLLI terribly. I’ll miss my work because it has been so meaningful to me,” she says. “OLLI really changed my life.”
As for her future involvement with OLLI, she is looking forward to becoming an ordinary member, taking classes, maybe teaching a course or two.
“OLLI is a place for people who are not done with learning,” she says. “It’s a place for ideas, where people are interested and interesting, and we are able to have conversations about any topic under the sun, I am so glad to be a part of that.”
--Sandy Buckley
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