Over 100 Encore students attended Lee University courses in the fall semester of 2007. The new program was so positive for everyone involved that Program Director Merica Stum says the program is “Here to stay.”

“The program far exceeded our expectations,” said Stum, noting the participants’ responses to the program.

The responses were so positive that during the current semester Lee will also be offering five mini-courses exclusively for Encore students, as they did in the fall semester. These courses will range from Memoir Writing, C.S. Lewis and Mixed Media Painting to Computers for Beginners and Computers for Not Quite Beginners.

The vision for the Encore program, which allows participants who are 60 years of age or older to attend two courses per semester for $50, initially came from University President Dr. Paul Conn.

Several faculty members then spent numerous hours forming the program from a combination of ideas.

Despite the amount of planning that went into the project, no one anticipated the overwhelming response it received.

“It exceeded our expectations, both in quality [of the programs] and response [of the participants],” said Stum.

The mini-courses will be offered to Encore students in addition to more than 100 regular courses, which include Recent American History and Government, Seminar in Songwriting, Ceramics, Principles of Accounting, Cultural Anthropology, Message of the New Testament, Camping, Backpacking, The American Novel, Computer Literacy and Application, Church of God History and Policy, as well as several beginner language courses.