OLLI 0008 - Monday Morning Mixer II
Course Description
Fall Session
October 5 — Universal Park: Building a Milwaukee for everyBODY, Damian Buchman — Learn about The Ability Center, a non-profit located in Wauwatosa, dedicated to providing individuals with disabilities daily opportunities to be fit, active, healthy, and to play. The organization is focused on transforming Greater Milwaukee into a more universally inclusive recreation destination through adaptive programs, community partnerships, and accessible design. This class is presented by Damian Buchman, the Founder of The Ability Center (TAC) and a transformative force in the realm of inclusivity and recreation, dedicated to reshaping the landscape of accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
October 12 — Through a Different Lens: Military-Driven Themes Behind the Stories, Yolanda Medina — Many films explore themes of love, resilience, and conflict resolution, often shaped by the influence of military service and experience. In this class, we will take a closer look at these movies through a fresh, analytical lens—examining how underlying military contexts drive character development, narrative tension, and emotional depth. Join us as we revisit familiar stories with a more nuanced and professional perspective. Presenter Yolanda Medina joined the Marine Corps out of high school and served as one of the first women to work on the environmental systems of the AV8A Harrier Jump Jet. She has a master’s degree in Adult, Community, and Professional Education from Carroll University.
October 19 — Cream City: The Brick that Made MKE Famous, Andrew Stern — Initially derided as useless, Milwaukee’s cream-colored brick became the city’s de facto masonry material and helped forge a lasting identity for the city in the nineteenth century. We’ll examine why Milwaukee’s glacial clay produced these unique cream bricks, look at how and where our brick was produced, and look at architectural examples found throughout Milwaukee and around the country. We will also see how our brick contributed to Milwaukee and how we developed our legacy as the Cream City. Presenter Andrew Stern has master’s degrees in historic preservation and urban planning from the University of Georgia and is a Historic Preservation Planner with the City of Milwaukee.
Presenter(s)
Damian Buchman is a transformative force in the realm of inclusivity and recreation, dedicated to reshaping the landscape of accessibility for individuals with disabilities. As the Founder of The Ability Center (TAC), his vision extends beyond boundaries, aiming to make greater Milwaukee the pinnacle of universal inclusivity in recreation worldwide.
Yolanda Medina is a native of Waukesha, WI. She joined the Marine Corps out of high school and served as one of the first women to work on the environmental systems of the AV8A Harrier Jump Jet. After completing her military service, Yolanda and her family moved back to Wisconsin where she focused most of her volunteer energies on Veterans groups. Her passion for women veterans, and the Latinx community, has led Yolanda to serve on the boards of the Latino Veterans Legacy of Valor Organization, the American GI Forum for Hispanic Veterans, Forward Latino, as advisor to Latinx Veteran issues. Yolanda earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies at Carroll University and obtained a master’s degree in Adult, Community, and Professional Education from Carroll University.
Andrew Stern is a Historic Preservation Planner with the City of Milwaukee. He previously served as the city planner for the City of Greenfield and as a historic preservation specialist with the Wisconsin Historical Society. Andrew is a board member of the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance and past board member of DocomomoUS/Wisconsin. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Portland State University and master’s degrees in historic preservation and urban planning from the University of Georgia.
Summer Session
July 6 — Mysterious Comets, Dennis Roscoe — For centuries, we have been fascinated by the appearance of comets. Dr. Roscoe will explore the world of comets. What are they made of, where do they come from and what role did they play in establishing life on Earth, are just a few topics that will be discussed. Recently, we have been visited by comets that originated outside of our own solar system. There has been a flurry of news reports about how these interstellar visitors could be alien spacecraft. Fact or fiction?
July 13 — Past and Shared Future: Native Perspective on Milwaukee, Marin Denning — Place-based education inspires people to be more active in their community. Marin Denning, an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, has been involved in education about indigenous people in the Milwaukee area and beyond. In this talk, he will talk about historical issues of alcoholism, intergenerational trauma, broken treaties and polluted waters and how they have impacted Native people, while focusing as well on how cultural survival has happened through traditional dance, environmental activism, spirituality and education.
July 20 — A Life in Dance, Maria Gillespie — This talk will introduce Gillespie's experience with long-form choreographic performance installations that bridge performance as auto-ethnographic, feminist practice to rewrite narratives designed by colonial destruction. Gillespie’s performances chart a path for meaning making as they outline the pre and post lingual knowledge generated and archived through dancing. She draws upon her kinesthetic practice as a corporeal nexus in which auto-ethnography, storytelling and interdisciplinary performance inaugurate a new translation practice.
Presenter(s)
Dennis Roscoe holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Arizona, School of Medicine. He has been a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University and a professor of Neurology at UW Madison, College of Medicine. For the past 16 years, he has also developed a passion for astronomy and astrophotography and currently owns and operates his own personal observatory (RoscoeSkies.com). He specializes in the imaging of deep space objects such as nebulae, and in May 2014, his images were published in TIME.com. He is a NASA Solar System Ambassador and teaches astrophotography as a guest lecturer at Carroll University.
Marin (Mark) Denning is an enrolled tribal member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He has been involved in public education programming for over 40 years. From his time as a student at Marquette University to being an adjunct lecturer at a university in Milwaukee, he has spent the time speaking for and about Native issues. Out of all those years, the two things he has become sure about is that everyone needs help and it is an honor to help those who need it. In education, we all need help because our process is a reciprocal relationship between us and our students. Our challenge is meet them where they are at — the more we seek the truth, the more truth-telling is needed. It takes time, conversation and commitment to get the best program fit possible.
Maria Soledad Gillespie (she/they) is a choreographer, performer, dance and somatic educator. She is a CLMA Laban Bartenieff Movement Analyst and a certified Pilates teacher. Locally, she directs MG/The Collaboratory and Hyperlocal MKE, both dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration and improvised performance.