For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This Spring 2000 piece explores Baylor’s Institute for Learning in Retirement (BILR), a volunteer-run program where 120 retired and semi-retired members take grade-free, prerequisite-free college-level courses purely for the love of learning. Taught largely by retired Baylor professors, classes range from philosophy and geology to Edgar Allan Poe and alternative medicine, with members also enjoying group outings to museums and gardens across Texas. Coordinated through Baylor’s Department of Continuing Education but shaped by its own members, BILR reflects a broader mission of keeping the mind, body, and soul active well into retirement. Featuring reflections from members like Mary Ila Colvin and her husband Herbert, the article captures the joy of curiosity unbound by degrees or deadlines.
If education—like youth—is wasted on the young, it’s certainly appreciated by the 120 retired and semi-retired members of Baylor’s Institute for Learning in Retirement (BILR).
These students don’t worry about their grades—there are none. They don’t care if a course doesn’t fit into their degree plan—there isn’t one. And they have no interest in prerequisites. In fact, most of them try to take courses on topics they’ve never studied before. They are involved for just one reason—a love of learning.
“I have a real dread of becoming a vegetable, sitting around and doing nothing,” said Mary Ila Colvin ’48, a retired Baylor professor and a BILR member for several years. “There are a lot of subjects I didn’t study in school and didn’t have time to explore while I was working,” she said.
Most classes are on college-level topics such as philosophy, geology, religion, or history, said Dr. Grady Gordon, a retired surgeon who is president of the volunteer-run BILR. The teachers are top-notch because most are Baylor professors, Gordon said, and the high quality draws members. “I think our members are trying to keep their minds, bodies, and souls active. Otherwise one could become a couch potato, and there’s very little future in that,” he said.
The program is coordinated through Baylor’s Department of Continuing Education, which provides administrative direction and clerical help. But decisions are made by members of the BILR, said Annette Lindsey, director of continuing education. A curriculum committee chooses courses, finds teachers, and secures locations for about eight classes each semester, she said.
Social and special events committees plan half a dozen outings each semester to places such as the Hummel Museum in New Braunfels and the Kimbell Museum and the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth. BILR also hosts an annual picnic.
The class schedule resembles that of a continuing education program, but only members can participate, Lindsey said. Dues are $40 per year for individuals and $75 for couples. Each class then costs $15. Topics have ranged from Edgar Allan Poe to alternative medicine.
Over the past few years, Colvin said, she has taken numerous classes with her husband, Dr. Herbert Colvin ’44, also a retired Baylor professor and currently the university carillonneur.
They’ve learned a lot in all the classes, she said, citing a cooking course in particular. “When I learned to cook,” Colvin said, “we did everything the old-fashioned way. Now I’ve learned some great shortcuts, and I have more time for my grandchildren and for taking BILR classes.”
