In-Person Courses   

This course is designed to give lifelong learners a better understanding of the forces that saw Pittsburgh’s transformation from a resource-rich wilderness into an industrial powerhouse whose people and innovations helped build America. This course will present Pittsburgh’s history to the start of World War II as more than two-dimensional, grayscale ideas about rivers, coal, and steel. Rather, the city’s history is presented in a vibrant way that not only tells the stories of the names we know—Braddock, Forbes, Carnegie, Rooney—but digs deeper to pull from the margins the voices whose stories we haven’t yet heard.

This course will introduce members to the genre of self-taught art and the artists who create it. Formerly called "outsider art," these artists paint, sculpt, sew, and decorate spaces with minimal to no influences from outside sources. Their materials are commonly what is at hand: found objects for sculpture, cardboard for canvases, and cast-off scrap for garden churches. We will look at the lives and work of a number of artists, many of whom had little to no education and lived in economically and socially challenging environments. The artists include Bill Traylor, the Quilters of Gee's Bend, Howard Finster, Nellie Mae Brown, and Australian aboriginal and Inuit artists, among others.

Diligent savers enter the second half of retirement with little insight into the complex tax and distribution planning dangers that can wipe away the sacrifice made during their working years. This course is designed to educate participants about how to keep more of their retirement savings by effective use of planning opportunities available under current tax laws. This course is updated annually to reflect new legislative developments and tax planning opportunities.