Eying the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) from afar but not ready to commit?

This winter eager learners, age 50 and over, who have yet to join OLLI, can sample any single Osher class for $35.

Try "A Taste of OLLI" this quarter and test your "brain fitness." Become better acquainted with today's modern prophets like Martin Luther King, César Chávez and Dorothy Day. Re-channel your energy in a Tai Chi Ch'uan class.

Work need not interfere with expanding your horizons. OLLI is adding Saturday classes to its schedule for those working during the week. Sign up now for our first Saturday class, "Beginning Painting Using Acrylics."

Combining knowledge with natural beauty, UCR Extension has partnered with The Desert Studies Center to offer ongoing weekend courses in nature studies, science, the arts and humanities.

Winter is the best time to set foot in the desert sands, feel the city tension fall away, and open your mind to new insights and creations. The first classes, Photographing the Eastern Mojave Desert and The Art and Science of Flint Knapping, begin Feb. 19 and 20.

Get personal instruction in the photography class as you learn how to best capture the brilliant browns, greens and blues of the desert landscape in your camera lens. Or learn the 4-million-year-old art of flint knapping and make your own arrowheads, hand axes and projectile points.

Courses coming this spring include:

• Bird Life of Eastern Mojave
• Lizards and Snakes of the East Mojave
• Botanical Illustration of Desert Flora
• Southwestern Desert Bats

Class fees at The Desert Studies Center include comfortable dorm rooms, hot showers, a kitchen, a computer lab, recreational facilities and a soaking pool. Consider it a spa weekend for your body and brain.

Only 800 to 1,000 panda bears are left in the world, and Sue Teele, Extension's director of Education, wants to be sure you get a chance to visit at least 40 of them.

For the past 18 years, Teele has been fascinated with the emotional and mental life of the panda. Last year, she was able to travel to one of the largest panda reserves in the world, the Wolong Panda Reserve in Chengdu, where she befriended both the pandas and their researchers.

This spring, Teele is inviting students to return to China with her on March 21 for a special 9-day travel study program that she helped create. Highlights of the trip include visits to two Giant Panda breeding centers — one in Chengdu and the other in Bifengxia.

Sign up now and learn about the efforts to breed these beautiful animals and preserve them in their own habitat.

One worker promoted. Tense relations between supervisor and subordinate smoothed. Overall, there are happier employees at American Electric Supply, Inc., in Corona, said Operations Manager Robert Fonseca. These are just some of the tangible results from UCR Extension's four onsite classes tailored for the company during the past three years.

"We never had any formal training for supervisors and managers before," said Fonseca, who has worked at American Electric for 10 years.

This winter, Extension's Custom Program Manager Susan Almeida delivers a new class to American Electric supervisors. They will study from Ken Blanchard's text, "Leading At A Higher Level."

"I would recommend Extension's programs to any company," Fonseca said.

For information, e-mail Susan Almeida or call (951) 827-1623.

Korean teachers from Incheon meet Lilla Villa, principal of Sunnymead Middle School, during a get-together banquet at UCR Extension in November.

This is the first group of English teachers from Incheon to visit UCR Extension since Incheon declared itself an "English City" and inaugurated the "Incheon Free English Zone" in February of 2007.

"Learning English is a way to a better life in my country," said Jung Youngtae, a Korean English teacher who teaches high school girls back home. "It earns you more status and more opportunity."

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