Instructor Profile - George Oberlander
George Oberlander
Meet George Oberlander - by George Oberlander and Ursula Nebiker January 2017
After retiring from Duke in 2008, where he ran a computer programming and support department for thirteen years, George has enthusiastically embraced his post-retirement teaching at OLLI. Music has been his passion for many years, and since teaching his first course in 2009, he has offered over a dozen music courses. This semester he’s teaching “The Art of the Guitar” that will focus on the development of the classical guitar from the Renaissance to contemporary times. He finds his teaching “tremendously satisfying; I like a cooperative learning environment, the sharing and feedback that I get in my classes.”
He was born and lived on Long Island until he was fifteen, when his father retired and the family moved to Florida. His high school in South Miami was brand new and offered an innovative and up-to-date curriculum . Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was also a graduate of the school.
Upon graduation in 1962, he enrolled at the University of Miami to study chemistry but, after two years, switched to a philosophy major, and won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate study. George left the University of Texas in 1970 when he was hired to teach philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York. While he was there he finished his dissertation and was awarded his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1972. However, in his third year at St. Bonaventure he was laid off because of a surplus of philosophy teachers due to curriculum restructuring.
Then began a period of career switching, as the liberal arts teaching market had collapsed. Fortunately, his chemistry background came in handy enabling George to land a job in Florida with a top-drawer medical diagnostic manufacturer. When that job ended, George moved to the New York area and, after a brief stint writing technical advertising for Madison Avenue agencies, he took a course in COBOL programming at a commercial school on Long Island.
This was in 1980, just before Apple came out with the first really popular personal computer. George started writing software for New York State Medicaid providers.
George’s computer career then took him to Dupont for several years and then to Lehigh Valley Hospital where he helped run a mainframe computer and implement software to run most of the hospital’s departments.
Joanne Napoli, who George married in 1985, convinced George to leave all that Pennsylvania winter driving and head south, where they chose to settle in Durham.
George landed a computer support job at Duke University that grew, over the 13 years he worked there, to include programming and computer support for a dozen Duke departments.
George’s favorite hobby and a mainstay of his life is classical music. He has a large collection of music DVDs and CDs which he uses for his OLLI courses. George also is an enthusiastic tennis player and manages to get out on the court most days. His other hobby is an interesting one: spending a couple of hours a day working on an internet German/English dictionary, submitting and reviewing translations.
After retiring from Duke in 2008, where he ran a computer programming and support department for thirteen years, George has enthusiastically embraced his post-retirement teaching at OLLI. Music has been his passion for many years, and since teaching his first course in 2009, he has offered over a dozen music courses. This semester he’s teaching “The Art of the Guitar” that will focus on the development of the classical guitar from the Renaissance to contemporary times. He finds his teaching “tremendously satisfying; I like a cooperative learning environment, the sharing and feedback that I get in my classes.”
He was born and lived on Long Island until he was fifteen, when his father retired and the family moved to Florida. His high school in South Miami was brand new and offered an innovative and up-to-date curriculum . Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was also a graduate of the school.
Upon graduation in 1962, he enrolled at the University of Miami to study chemistry but, after two years, switched to a philosophy major, and won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate study. George left the University of Texas in 1970 when he was hired to teach philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York. While he was there he finished his dissertation and was awarded his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1972. However, in his third year at St. Bonaventure he was laid off because of a surplus of philosophy teachers due to curriculum restructuring.
Then began a period of career switching, as the liberal arts teaching market had collapsed. Fortunately, his chemistry background came in handy enabling George to land a job in Florida with a top-drawer medical diagnostic manufacturer. When that job ended, George moved to the New York area and, after a brief stint writing technical advertising for Madison Avenue agencies, he took a course in COBOL programming at a commercial school on Long Island.
This was in 1980, just before Apple came out with the first really popular personal computer. George started writing software for New York State Medicaid providers.
George’s computer career then took him to Dupont for several years and then to Lehigh Valley Hospital where he helped run a mainframe computer and implement software to run most of the hospital’s departments.
Joanne Napoli, who George married in 1985, convinced George to leave all that Pennsylvania winter driving and head south, where they chose to settle in Durham.
George landed a computer support job at Duke University that grew, over the 13 years he worked there, to include programming and computer support for a dozen Duke departments.
George’s favorite hobby and a mainstay of his life is classical music. He has a large collection of music DVDs and CDs which he uses for his OLLI courses. George also is an enthusiastic tennis player and manages to get out on the court most days. His other hobby is an interesting one: spending a couple of hours a day working on an internet German/English dictionary, submitting and reviewing translations.
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Editor's Note : If you would like to show appreciation to the profiled instructor, you can email to instructor-profile@olliatduke.org
If you would like to hear George talk about a course on Mozart which he offered several yeas ago, just click on the play symbol in the nearby video. This may require you to click again on "Watch this video on YouTube" to play it in YouTube ... that's OK. |
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