Shared Interest Groups   

*Not accepting new members at this time.*
Right or wrong? Good or evil? Yes or no? Our own life experiences surely include having to decide between alternative courses of action that may seem equally right. Which one is the best? Is there a moral compass that determines our decisions? Are these decisions more difficult to make in a 21st century world? How might our own values guide us in these decisions? In this new OLLI Shared Interest Group (SIG) offering we will examine fascinating questions, hypothetical or real, drawn from historical examples, contemporary news, and our own experiences. All participants can expect to contribute to our discussions, and might come away with new insights into human behavior. Our Ethical Issues SIG will be guided by Beth Kon and Stu Simon. 

Beth brings years of successful experience overseeing SIGs in the Chicago area.

Stu has led the popular OLLI seminar on Group Facilitation and is a past chair of the OLLI Study Group Committee.
This SIG renews in September.

Artificial Intelligence - AI 360

The AI field continues to move at a breathtaking pace, with near-weekly announcements of surprising breakthroughs and mind-bending research - broadcast via blog posts, conference papers, web videos and media interviews. AI today is a global phenomenon. There is no AI Winter in our near future. The world moves briskly forward with object recognition, universal language translation, conversation and humanoid robots that talk, gesture and dance. Building human level machine intelligence, or AGI, embodied as robots continues to be the holy grail. 

Fervent believers, defiant contrarians, radical experimenters and centrist thought leaders populate this new AI ecosystem.

The AI 360 SIG that began in 2022 will continue in 2023. The scope will be expanded to include news/ideas from fields like cognitive neuroscience, computer science, psychology, etc. that also inform and inspire the AI field. 

The main AI topics and themes covered in 2022 will be refreshed to reflect the latest breakthroughs, recent successes and failures, and will be presented in the opening sessions to reorient the SIG to the core AI concepts discussed in the prior year.

This SIG is a platform for a conceptual understanding of the AI breakthroughs, and for a robust discussion on various emerging and persisting AI topics. 

In 2023 the SIG will meet twice a month. Each session will last 2 hours. Meeting schedules and topics will be finalized by participants. 

This SIG renews in January.

On a weekly basis, this group will discuss all contemporary events that are of interest, including but not limited to domestic, international, political and academic developments that are of current and historical significance. What is discussed depends on the group's members. Our conversations are civil and no topic or perspective is off limits.

*This Shared Interest Group is not currently accepting new members.*

This Shared Interest Group is a gathering of literary short fiction aficionados, who enjoy close, critical and joyful readings of classic as well as contemporary short story masterpieces pulled from The New Yorker and other well-regarded anthologies. 

This SIG meets about half the year - typically 8-10 contiguous weeks at a time, followed by 10 week long breaks.

This SIG renews in September.

THIS SIG IS ONLY ACCEPTING REGISTRATIONS FROM CURRENT MEMBERS ONLY. THERE ARE NO NEW OPENINGS AT THIS TIME.

The Mystery Book Club is all about mysteries. Mysteries are the only genre of literature where an author offers readers a chance to figure out the story for themselves. We all love identifying the villain before he or she’s revealed. But some authors do this better than others.
Led by Wendy Mead and Timothy Richards.
This SIG renews in January.

Healthcare is undergoing radical changes. Consider robotic surgery, immunotherapy for cancer, the staggering cost of new drugs, whole genome sequencing, detailed imaging of the brain, walk-in clinics in drug stores, and telemedicine.
Participants in this SIG will consider one aspect of such changes each month and discuss the consequences for their families and on a national basis. Health practitioners are encouraged to register for the SIG in order to enrich the discussion with their personal expertise and knowledge.
This SIG renews every September.

The Schmoozery began in 2020 and has been meeting weekly since then.  Along with a core group of regular participants, we always welcome new members to the schmooze.The format is simple: a facilitated conversation in which we share stories and reflections about topics that arise from week to week.  That has included aging, generations, health, family, legacies, friendship, and whatever is “hot” for us at that meeting.  The specific issues and themes are less important than the chance to listen to, and learn with, each other.  That is, the goal is to have the best possible conversation about things that matter.  And to have fun at the same time.  We usually do. Hank Greenspan is a psychologist, essayist, oral historian, and playwright recently retired from UM.  He has been a committed schmoozer his whole life.

This SIG renews in September.