Adult Learners Institute of Chelsea coming to Manchester!

submitted by Joan Gaughan, Adult Learners Institute

Thanks to its director, Kathy Dimond, Manchester District Library has been added to the list of sites for Adult Learners Institute (ALI) classes. Now, not only Manchester residents, but people in Clinton and other surrounding areas will have much easier access to the popular, college-level classes taught by volunteer experts as well as the opportunity to meet new friends and possibly even neighbors you didn’t know you had. Housed at 912 City Rd on the southeastern edge of the city, about a quarter of a mile west of the intersection of Highway 52 and City Road, it is easily accessible from Clinton.

For its maiden semester this fall in Manchester, ALI is offering two classes taught by instructors with whom ALI students may already be familiar. Grace Shackman, who has shared her extensive knowledge of western Washtenaw County’s past with ALI students for many years, will be teaching a class on Manchester’s history. She will be partnering with Ray Berg, whose knowledge of our history at least equals if not surpasses what many of us know about our area.

The second class, on the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893 commemorating the landing of Columbus in the New World, will be taught by John Hauger, whose recent classes in the  musical history of the twentieth century brought back memories of our own — and our parents’ — past.

Information on these two classes and ALI’s other fall semester classes is being provided at the Fall Kick-Off in the McKune Room at the Chelsea District Library, 221 S Main St, in Chelsea, at 10am on Tuesday, August 13. Comfortable chairs among friendly people as well as refreshments will be provided as you meet ALI board members and the instructors who will be describing the classes they will be teaching at various locations in the area, in addition to Manchester. This fall term there will be travelogues, football, history, music, women artists and pilots, amateur radios, how to identify a criminal … or not, trees, trauma, holiday cooking, and even vampires among the offered subjects.

Although the new website has made online registrations for ALI classes easier, there will be a short tutorial on how to navigate it. Paper registrations will also be accepted at the Kick-Off as well as throughout the fall term.

In addition, two people will win a $25 certificate for fall 2024 or winter/spring 2025 classes. For more information, consult the ALI website at https://alimichigan.org/ or contact them at info@ALIMichigan.org or (734) 292-5540.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.