PEIR: A Lifelong Learning Program with Few Peers

Episode description:  

As older adults move into their traditional retirement years, a growing number of them do not want to retire their minds. In fact, many experts note that those who continue learning and engage in meaningful social interaction on average live longer and healthier lives. In today’s episode I talk with Murray Shapiro and Ron Susser, two active members of PEIR, which stands for Personal Enrichment in Retirement, a unique and highly successful lifelong learning organization affiliated with Hofstra University on Long Island. What makes PEIR so distinctive? The  classes, discussion groups, and events are self-directed, planned, created and presented by PEIR members themselves. Murray and Ron will describe how the organization has evolved over more than four decades, how it survived through the pandemic, and how it’s run and thriving today. Every month, PEIR members offer a far-flung array of topics, whether you’re interested in literature, history, religion, philosophy, natural or social sciences, the performing or visual arts, economics or technology.  PEIR is also a social organization, and Ron and Murray will tell us how its members build camaraderie, sharing their curiosity, opinions, knowledge and passions with others each semester.             

Guest descriptions: 

Murray Shapiro has been a member of PEIR (Personal Enrichment in Retirement) for eight years, and for the past three years has been PEIR’s Chairman. He is a frequent PEIR presenter on topics including science, news, politics, and a variety of other subjects. He was very involved in the transition of PEIR during the COVID pandemic from a Hofstra University-based organization to one with multiple venues. And recently, PEIR returned to the Hofstra campus for a part of its program. Prior to retirement in 2010, he worked as an engineer in various aspects of the U.S. missile defense program, such as participation in programs with our allies, including England and Israel. He is 89 years old and the father of three children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He lives in Woodmere, N.Y.

Ron Susser Joined PEIR in early 2020 and is currently a PEIR Council Member. Before retiring in 2019, he worked at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and was vice president for Glenwood Management Corp, a New York City developer and management of rental properties.  Born in East New York, Brooklyn in 1950, he is a graduate of Queens College and attended Columbia Graduate School in political science.

Contacts:

Murray Shapiro: stsa@optonline.net

Ron Susser: Susser.ron@gmail.com

Website: https://www.hofstra.edu/academics/ce/lifelonglearning/peir/