This course will share the reunion of a mother and daughter 66 years after being separated at birth at The Willows Maternity Sanitarium. We will delve into the history of The Willows and dozens of other maternity homes that brought more than 100,000 young women shrouded in secrecy to Kansas City.

Instructor bio: KelLee Parr holds bachelor's degrees in agriculture and education plus a master's degree in adult and occupational education from Kansas State University. He has taught elementary school for many years in Topeka and now writes science curriculum for Nancy Larson Publishers.

The 1950s were a very special decade in the history of the musical with such figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, and Jule Styne writing such shows as The King and I, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, and Gypsy for the Broadway stage. This will be survey of the decade's most popular shows, the people who wrote them, and the stars who played in them.

Instructor bio: Paul Laird is a Professor Emeritus of Musicology who taught at KU for thirty years. He has published widely on the American musical theater and taught dozens of Osher courses over the last three decades.

Generative AI is everywhere – in your social media accounts and word processing programs, in your search engine and your doctor’s office. What is it? Why is it everywhere? And should it be? This course will offer an introduction to generative AI, explaining how it works, what it can and can’t do, what ethical problems trouble it from development to deployment, and how to protect yourself if you or others choose to use it.

Kathryn Conrad is professor of English at the University of Kansas, where her current research focuses on technology and culture and critical AI studies. She is an associate editor for the journal Critical AI and has published on critical AI literacy, most recently with Sean Kamperman, with whom she co-directs the AI & Digital Literacy project in partnership with the Hall Center and the National Humanities Center Institute, and with Tania Duarte and Ismael Garcia, of the UK nonprofit We and AI. In 2024, she was the US representative on an international expert panel advising the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education. She is also a founding member of the international Library of Babel group for technocritical educators currently housed by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology.