Bill McNamee is an evangelist for lifelong learning and more specifically for the new Northwest Oregon OLLI program at University of Oregon’s campus in the Concordia neighborhood.
“I’m thrilled to be part of it,” McNamee said. “I’ve always been a lifelong learner.”
OLLI stands for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. It’s a national program started in 1977 for people over 50 and is affiliated with more than 120 universities nationwide, including Clemson, Dartmouth, Florida State, Southern Oregon, and UC Berkeley. In Oregon, OLLI also has outposts in Eugene/Springfield and Central Oregon; Portland members can attend online presentations from around the state, as well as in-person offerings at the Concordia campus.
McNamee is the program’s only local employee; its teachers, who give presentations on a wide array of topics, are volunteers.
Presentations this fall include Don Brookhyser on downtown Portland’s architecture and architects; Dr. Aaron Beck, a Lewis & Clark emeritus professor of musicology, on “The Beautiful in Music III,” a six-part series; and four writing workshops facilitated by Hannah Kuhn, M.A., among others.
Bill, a former federal ‘bureaucrat,’ in his words, started evangelizing for OLLI in August 2025, seven months after it launched here. At the time, only about 25 people were enrolled, and some offerings attracted just a handful of learners. In less than a year, that’s grown to nearly 140 — thanks to Bill’s tireless promotional efforts and a bevy of fascinating presentations, from “The Current State of Journalism” to “A History of Impressionism.”
A six-month membership costs $140 and entitles you to attend any presentation without registration or additional fee. (Year-long and three-month memberships are also available.) Better yet, anyone can attend a lecture for free to get a feel for what OLLI’s all about — and there are no tests and no homework!
Find out more at osher.uoregon.edu.
Chris Rauber and his wife moved to Portland and B-W in mid-2022 after many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wrote for the San Francisco Business Times and other publications. He was born in Oregon.