Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai

Ruth has been a member of ELLA since 2012, after retiring. She says she loves learning and “ELLA is the place for seniors to learn in small chunks.  One can take a course and decide whether or not you want to pursue that interest further.”

At the end of the first session she attended, Ruth volunteered for the Science Committee, part of the Program Development group, and after one year, became the Chair, a position she held for two years before recruiting someone new.  She believes it is important to keep people engaged by moving into new positions.  Prior to the pandemic, she worked with the then Chair of the Program Development Committee, Walter Archer, who had planned to hand over his job to Ruth at the completion of the 2021 season.  Then the pandemic struck and everything shut down.

Walter and Ruth wanted to offer courses online. The ELLA Board anticipated one or two courses – but Walter and Ruth offered to do ten! The online sessions worked so well, but volunteers found running three sessions a year exhausting, so in June 2021 the board made the decision to offer the winter online and spring in-person sessions only, and not offer autumn courses.

In total, Ruth has worked as an ELLA volunteer for over ten years in various positions. As she says: “It was a delight to make new friends and work with people such as Walter and others who bring their strength, expertise and contacts and why ELLA has been successful in recruiting volunteers who are both stimulated and engaged. ELLA is a safe space to be ignorant, to ask dumb questions; it is an inclusive environment where total opposites can be heard, which inform and shape one’s perspective, where people can become more objective, based on learning. Whenever one meets new people, it expands one’s mind if you are willing to listen to different, even opposite views, where one can exchange and learn to be more objective, to speak out against injustices, unfairness or challenges.”

During her time working on programming for ELLA, Ruth found out first-hand that, not only the students, but also the instructors love ELLA.  “They get feedback from an enthusiastic audience who are engaged and actually listen. They become part of the stimulation of ELLA as do the students. It’s not just the courses, it’s the shared learning environment that makes the difference.”

Looking to the future, Ruth believes “We need to continue adapting and trying new ideas to make ELLA attractive. Costs are increasing for space so new revenues are needed; the struggle for new volunteers never stops, and we need to recruit leadership for all the committees, which needs to adapt quickly as our environment changes. Last year recording lectures was introduced. ELLA could offer an option for members to register for recorded courses where they need to access learning in their own time and place to catch up on missed course material or all of the course. This would provide a new revenue source. Recorded or online sessions could be contracted to other organizations such as SAGE and seniors’ centres. NAIT and Norquest may have space at cheaper rates than the University is currently providing. We could expand our online courses across other provinces.”

[ Interviewed by Patricia Waisman ]