INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Tom Trolle got so much out of a Dartmouth lecture series, summering with his wife, Lorette, near his alma mater every year, that he wondered why he couldn’t bring a similar series south to Indian River State College.
“I was at a cocktail party in Hanover and I ran into the guy who started this. I happened to know the provost here and I went to him and said why don’t we start something like this here?”
That series became the pilot program for the Fielden Institute for LifeLong Learning, recently renamed in honor of a $500,000 donation by the Vero family of the late Dr. Jack Fielden. Fielden and his Wife, Jean, were founding members of the program.
“We’re 80 percent complete toward a $1 million endowment goal,” says Laura Kelley, the institute’s program director.
Billing itself as IRSC’s “health club for the brain,” the institute is aimed at people age 50 and over.
The program is peer-run; members not only decide on programming, they lead it as well.
Lifelong Learning now includes art lectures through a new partnership with the island’s Intrepid Gallery.
For the first time, there will be a series of lectures by former Navy Seals in conjunction with the Navy Seal museum at the south end of our island.
Meanwhile, the growing group that comes to listen to lectures by the conductor of the Atlantic Classical Orchestra is having to be moved to the auditorium.
In all, there are more than 600 subscribers to the institute, nearly half of them from Indian River County.
“It’s where the program got started,” says Kelley. “There’s tremendous time and talent here. It’s one of the reasons our program is so well received. They’ve made lifelong learning a part of their yearlong activities.”
This year, for the first time, Quail Valley Club will be hosting three of the lecture series speakers.
“It’s a way of introducing their members to Lifelong Learning,” says Kelley.
Two Vero alumni clubs are also hosting speakers. Both efforts will no doubt garner interest in the program, which is already nearly sold out.
The partnership with Intrepid will feature six of the gallery’s exhibiting artists speaking about their work at the college.
The college is calling it the “Artist at Work” series.
“We’re thrilled,” says gallery co-owner Victoria Palacios. “It gives our artists a chance to be seen and heard by people outside the gallery, and it brings not only our best local artists but artists from Miami and South America to speak about their art.”
Kelley says the talks will be open to the public, and not just subscribers to the institute.
“It’s a community outreach program so you don’t have to be a member to participate. Some artists, people will recognize, but others are new and very, very interesting, doing some really exciting and fantastic art.”
Another returning favorite is the Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s ‘Behind the Baton’ series.
Conductor Stewart Robinson leads an educational program at the Vero campus on the Wednesday morning prior to the Thursday evening ACO performances, typically at St. Edward’s Waxlax Center.
The orchestra performs in Stuart the following night. Kelley says while the two-hour seminar is a still small group, it has outgrown the Richardson Center conference room and moved to the auditorium.
“He’s amassed quite a following,” says Kelley. “He sings, he plays, he talks about the history of the music and the composer. He’s so talented and also very entertaining.”
As for the lecture series, the institute is now offering small study groups with reading material provided by the lecturer in the week following the talk.
“It’s hours and hours on the computer and telephoning and emailing,” says Ford Park, a volunteer on the committee that chooses the lecture series speakers. “I’m retired and I’m interested so I’m willing. I’m just trying to reach out to people in the community who are fascinated with current issues. There’s a huge amount of political noise in this community and we’re not into that. We’re interested in getting folks that like to talk about problems the nation faces.”
“We are willing to prioritize these lectures over golf or tennis. Not everyone wants to do that,” says Trolle.
When Trolle approached the college about the idea, the provost of the Vero campus, David Sullivan, told him they’d already tried and failed. When Sullivan told Trolle the topics were art-related, Trolle saw his niche.
“I said make them about hot-button issues, current events. Make the subject the celebrity,” he said.
The lectures are held in the morning at the Richardson Center on Vero’s Mueller campus, and repeated the same day at the college’s campus in Stuart. In between is a VIP luncheon in Vero, catered by the college’s culinary institute.
The five-speaker series now has 500 subscribers. Of the 250 in Vero, 75 are from the barrier island, a number that is expected to increase as word spreads. The Richardson Center can hold 300.
“We try to be affordable,” says Kelley, pointing out that tickets cost $26 as compared to $65 and up at other venues in town. “Most of our speakers are not speakers you would normally see in a speakers’ bureau type of series. Our pricing goes along with that as well.”
So far the series has featured professors from distinguished universities including Dartmouth, MIT, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, and from think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.
Last year, the series invited Knight Kiplinger of newsletter fame. This year’s lectures include talks on Afghanistan, immigration, being Muslim in America, energy policy and the future of personalized medicine, using DNA to determine treatments and pre-disposition to disease.
Many feel IRSC’s Mueller campus still lacks adequate signage directing residents to both the college and its new Brackett Library, a part of the county library system.
Both are located off of 58th Avenue behind the Home Depot store on S.R. 60. For more information on the institute, call (772) 462-7880.
