Aftera 19-year absence, the Baltimore Free University is thriving once again.
Co-sponsored by the Village Learning Place in Charles Village and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Concern, the free, adult, not-for-credit classes are teeming as the continuing education program founded in 1968 completes its third year of its second incarnation.
Three hundred-plus students are registered in 25 courses this spring, according to Village Learning Place Executive Director Liesje Gantert.
Her organization has been involved with the Free University for the past 1 1/2 years, after Bill Tiefenwerth, director of JHU?s Center for Social Concern, revived the offerings on the Hopkins campus in the fall of 2003. The Free University had been discontinued in 1984 after founder and former Hopkins chaplain Chester Wickwire retired.
The classes, open to city and county residents alike for a $10 registration fee, include jazz study, photojournalism, master gardening, the essays of John Ruskin ? led by popular Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Ed Hopkins ? and beginner conversational Spanish.
“We?re definitely getting a bigger response every semester,” Gantert said. “We?re getting interest from all different parts of the city, too, which is nice to see.”
About a half-dozen classes this spring hit their maximum enrollment, including Spanish, taught by Sheila Smith-Banks, of Rosedale, a Baltimore teacher for 32 years with a master?s from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in bilingual education.
“This is my first time teaching here, but I?m enjoying it,” Smith-Banks said. Her daughter, Tonya Thomas, leads the Flavors of the World cooking class following her on Saturdays. “There was a lot of demand, I know,” Smith-Banks added. “They already want me to teach again next semester.”
In the mid-1970s, when the school was originally opened, Bonnie Garden, now 57, was singleand living in Charles Village. She took film classes for fun and auto repair out of necessity. Now she?s married and lives in Canton, but she?s also back in school, taking an introductory Spanish class.
“In the foreign film seminar we studied Luis Bunuel, a Spanish director,” Gardner said. “We watched ?Jules and Jim,? directed by Francois Truffaut. It was wonderful. All the classes have been interesting, enriching. It?s not just what you?re learning either; the teachers and students are such a unique mix.”
