OLLI Honors Veteran Instructors

         Teaching Awards for 25+ classes February 2020
Two teaching awards have been given to instructors who have taught 25 or more classes for OLLI.  This special recognition is rare: in the 43-year-history of OLLI, fewer than 5% of instructors have taught at least this many courses.

Melanie Crain has been a Mac computer user for over 30 years.  At OLLI she started teaching iWorks and other courses using iOS.  She also has co-taught Photoshop Elements.  More recently she has concentrated on courses about the iPad, a device that has become her go-anywhere computer.

Last Spring Melanie combined her computer skills with her interest in genealogy to teach “MacOS Numbers for Genealogy:  A Spreadsheet Workshop.”  This year as Margo Fariss Brewer was unable to teach her genealogy courses, Melanie stepped in to assist Beth Balkite in teaching Genealogy VI, beginning and intermediate courses in “Applying DNA to Your Family Tree,” to keep these popular courses going at OLLI at Duke.

Thomas Thorne is accredited through the Court of Master Sommeliers and has been a professional sommelier for twenty-five years.  He owns Wine Fifty Five, a local wine consulting company focused on education, sales, and sommelier services.  He has headed wine programs at the Fearrington House, the Carolina Inn, and the Siena Hotel.  He is a previous owner of the Hope Valley Bottle Shop.  From the beginning of his OLLI teaching, his wine tasting courses have been so popular that we have needed two sections for each class.

We send a big “thank you” to both Melanie and Thomas for sharing their expertise with us and for their contributions to OLLI at Duke over the years.

Winter 2020 Instructors

OLLI Winter 2020 Instructors
Who is teaching a course for OLLI in the Winter Term? Check out the list of all the instructors in this thank-you from the Instructor Relations Committee.You can download the list here.