PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The University of Maine Presque Isle’s Seniors Achieving Greater Education program is celebrating its 20th anniversary and looking forward to an increasingly diverse set of course offerings and excursions.
More than 40 SAGE members and instructors gathered Monday morning to mark the senior education and enrichment program’s 20th year in operation and to kick off the spring semester.
“We’ve evolved over the last 20 years,” said SAGE board member Suzanne Sandusky.
“We offer 20-some-odd courses in the spring and the fall, along with special excursion and one-day opportunities. In recent years, we’ve had more and more requests for one day sessions.”
The all-volunteer SAGE program offers courses and presentations on everything from beginner’s French and history to technology lessons and farm tours.
SAGE got started in the late 1990s following a model taken by other senior citizen programs at other colleges and universities around the state and country, Sandusky said.
“There was a group of people who decided that people over the traditional age of college education would be interested in something that would both provide them learning experiences and socialization,” Sandusky said. “We’re big on that,” she said of the social component.
The SAGE program is open to anyone aged 50 and over and costs $42 per semester, plus additional fees that may come with day trips. Classes meet for two hours twice a week.
“We’re strictly a local organization,” Sandusky said. “We offer courses and excursions and other activities, specifically for what our members would like to have us do.”
SAGE excursions this spring and summer will include trips to local goat and garlic farms and historic sites such as the McAdam Railway Station on the New Brunswick-Maine border. There are also numerous outdoors trips organized in collaboration with the Caribou Recreation Department, including a trip to the New Brunswick Botanical Gardens in Edmunston, New Brunswick.
Also new with SAGE this year is a partnership with the Aroostook Regional Transportation System, said SAGE director Penny Kearn.
In an effort to help SAGE members who can’t drive, SAGE is purchasing special tickets for members that they can use with ARTS, Kearn said. An ARTS bus will pick up members, take them to class or an event, and take them to one other stop afterward before returning them home, Kearn said.
