Midcoast Senior College, bringing classes to seniors interested in lifelong learning, announces a variety of courses for its Spring Term II. Courses will begin the week of April 10 and will run through May 19 and are four to six weeks long. There is a selection of in-person and online (Zoom) classes. No grades, no exams just learning for the fun of it!

Registration opens March 20 at www.midcoastseniorcollege.org or call us at 207-725-4900. To register for a course, you must be a current MSC member or a current member of another Maine senior college. The annual $35 non-refundable membership fee is valid from July 1 through June 30 of each calendar year. All courses are $60 per person. A $10 discount is given for two people in the same household taking an online Zoom class together. For comprehensive information on both registration and courses, please visit midcoastseniorcollege.org. MSC offers confidential tuition waivers to its members from its scholarship fund. Please contact us if our fees are outside your budget. Send your tuition waiver request to info@midcoastseniorcollege.org and we will contact you. There are no forms to complete.

We have an exciting array of classes to offer seniors for Spring Term II!

Steven Piker will be offering an online course Religious Conversion ...What is it? Of what does religious conversion consist? Paul on the road to Damascus? ... or? Conversion abounds in our U.S. world. This course sees it as an integral part of the life of the convert, in which the convert has considerable agency. Adopting a biographical perspective, we will rely on detailed case materials, seeking to grasp conversion from the convert’s point of view.

Susan Goran will offer an online course A Final Gift: Advance Directives. Despite the meteoric advances in life-extending technologies, death continues to come and occurs daily in most advanced healthcare organizations. The desire to control our final destiny requires knowledge and informed decisions, and articulating our final wishes to ensure that when we are unable to self-advocate, others can respectfully speak on our behalf. This course prepares the student to discuss and document final decisions.

George Young will take you on a journey through an in-person course Virgil’s The Aeneid. Often called “the poem of Europe,” Virgil’s beautifully written Latin epic tells the story of Aeneas, the Trojan prince who fled his fallen home city and struggled through trials of devotion and courage to found a new civilization: Rome. This course will focus on what may have made The Aeneid so important for so many centuries and will explore its value and relevance for our time.

Want to sing? Let Stuart Gillespie take you through five musical pieces in MSC Singers -Oldies and Goodies. Five pieces that have been voted by the Singers as their favorites include “Four Strong winds” and “Shenandoah.” Stuart is a published composer and has written numerous musical arrangements of well-known folk songs for the MSC Singers. This is an in-person course.

Have you ever wondered about the origin of everything around us and how it will all end up? Then join Bill Hammond in Introduction to Big History I. Using the latest scientific and historical research available, Part I tells the story of the Big Bang to the emergence of life on Earth. Part II, the sequel to this course, will trace the evolution of human beings, our history as Earth’s dominant species, and what the future may look like to the end of the universe. Big History I is an in-person course.

David Treadwell will be introducing us to Let’s Try Flash Fiction! In “flash fiction” the writer takes a short prompt (e.g., “the smell of chocolate” or “what a way to die”) and then writes a short story (1,000 words or less) to that prompt. The class will take a hands-on approach. David has been a professional writer for over 45 years and will share thoughts and tips on the genre. Students will be able to share their flash fiction with others in this in-person course.

Susan Bowditch will lead students through Affirmative Action in College Admissions: Where Do We Go From Here? In June of 2023 the Supreme Court will render a decision about two cases related to affirmative action in college admissions: The University of North Carolina and Harvard University. In order to understand the history of affirmative action, we will explore the origins of the idea, which were planted even earlier than the 1960s civil rights movement. This is an in-person course.

Robert Bunselmeyer will offer an online course England, 1910. In this course students will read and discuss two novels that brilliantly describe the social culture and class relationships of industrial England and urban/commercial England just before World War I. Robert will give short presentations about British society and politics before the war to provide background knowledge to the two novels, D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers” and E. M. Foster’s “Howard’s End.”