‘Forever Young’ With ICL : Seniors Exercising Curiosity in Class

Many keep coming back, saying it saved their sanity. Many say it’s kept them young, like an intellectual fountain of youth. They say it gives them a chance to stay alive, to sharpen their minds in ways never thought possible.

As one put it, in the words of Bob Dylan, it keeps them “forever young.”

Take, for instance, Albin Anderson. He came here eight years ago, having been head of the history department at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He hoped to flee the gulag-like winters and to settle in La Jolla.

He didn’t want to vegetate.

He and his wife “did nothing for a year,” then threw themselves into the varied curriculum of the Institute of Continued Learning (ICL), a division of UC San Diego Extension.

ICL is now in its 12th year. A program for the retired or semi-retired, it’s for thinkers like Anderson who don’t want to vegetate, who want to do more than lounge by a pool or grow fastened to a chair. What it isn’t , he said, is a “basket-weaving, knitting” club, though he and others wax rhapsodic about trips, luncheons and car-pools to museums. These he calls “our delicious social aspects.”

Regimen Is Intense

The regimen of ICL is intense, not much different from that faced by the undergraduates who populate the campus. Like the rest of UCSD, the ICL is on the quarter system, meaning it functions mainly in the fall, winter and spring, with weekly seminars in the summer.

ICL students go to class as often as they’d like, at the pace they prefer. Classes are offered for two hours twice a day--once in the morning, once in the afternoon--and many students attend all sessions offered in the 10-week quarter.

ICL offers 15 study groups, taught by the students, many of whom are former teachers. Retired lawyers, doctors and government workers--as well as veterans of other occupations--round out the ranks. One course each quarter is taught by a UCSD professor, who lectures in his field. Anderson’s favorite was Michael Parrish, chairman of the UCSD history department, teaching a course on the Constitution titled “The Trials of America.”

Just a few of the study groups offered this fall include the writing of autobiographies, archeology, computer workshops, discussions of “great books,” biomedicine and science, the Bible as history, the world of theater, and music for pleasure.

Ruth Wilke is an ICL veteran of eight years. She disagrees with critics who admit that San Diego is a warm-weather mecca for retirees but one offering little in programs, activities and culture.

“I’ve heard that,” she said, “and I just don’t buy it. It’s bunk. You are what you choose to be. There’s a lot to do here but not if you don’t look for it.”

Moves Outside Specialty

Anderson, 76, calls ICL “300 intellectually curious senior citizens.” He treasures the program for having schooled him in fields outside his specialty, such as medicine and archeology.

“One factor binding us all is that intellectual curiosity,” he said. “Some come because they strive to learn, others because they long to teach, or share. We start with the idea that these are people concerned with the big questions of life. These are people who want to stay committed, who want to be good citizens, who don’t want to wither away.”

Anderson knows of no one who’s left ICL feeling intimidated or out of place. ICL appeals to bright, gifted individuals but isn’t, he said, “an elitist group.” He called the rate of attrition “extremely low,” saying it’s “just not your stereotypical bunch of seniors.” He called the atmosphere “warm and congenial” and said “everyone is welcome. We don’t turn anyone away. We encourage them all to stay.” (Tuition is $150 per year.)

ICL members include Joseph Rubinger, 93, a former biology professor who founded the program and modeled it after the Institute for Retired Professors in New York City; Betty Martindale, a professional in the court system; Edward Howatt, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, and Harold Davis, one of many former physicians. ICL also serves as sanctuary for flocks of East Coast “snowbirds” during the winter.

Davis, 66, the current president of ICL, said he had learned much about the book of Genesis, as taught by the Judaic department; the political shenanigans of New York City; the histories of Sweden and Iron Curtain eastern Europe, and the thawing of tundra along the Alaskan Pipeline, which he said is a big problem every summer.

Program Catches On Elsewhere

He said ICL had become so popular that it has opened doors to representatives from around North America, aiming to start similar ventures. They include academicians from Boston, Houston and Edmonton, Alberta, as well as folks from “Plato” at UCLA, with which ICL is loosely affiliated. (Plato is UCLA’s version of the same program.)

“I see retirement as a series of steps advancing toward old age,” Davis said. “I don’t see it as a languishing, brought on abruptly, which so many foolishly think it is. They start retiring that way, then they’re in trouble. Retirement is not sedentary, it’s progressive. It keeps the mind alive to be in a program like this. It keeps you forever young.”

Wilke defines ICL as existing for people “with a continuous desire to learn.” Davis likes it for the diversity it champions. He’s met thinkers from all walks of life. Anderson likes it for the intellectual challenge. He’d much rather mull over the Polynesian era of anthropology than resign himself to being a “full-time couch potato.”

“There was this woman who went to the same college I did,” Davis said, “George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She and her husband worked for CBS for years and years. We met up again in this program. One of her daughters said something really neat at her father’s 80th birthday party.

“She said, ‘We children have made our parents grow old--we’ve given them white hair and wrinkles. But you, ICL, have made them grow young again.’ ”