As a professor stepped on a podium June 21 in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union, the excited chatter fell silent.

However, unlike most college classes, the students gathered for this lecture were mostly over the age of 50.

These students participated in the 39th annual Mini University, an event co-sponsored by the IU Alumni Association and Bloomington Continuing Studies to support lifelong learning.

The week-long Mini University began June 20 and allowed participants to attend up to 15 non-credited classes taught by IU faculty.

“We look at nine categories of topics that we think would be of interest to people: the arts, business and technology, domestic issues, health, fitness and leisure, human growth and development, humanities, international and science,” said Jeanne Madison, co-director of Mini University.

The attendance for Mini University continues to grow every year and was at an all-time high this year with 520 participants, said co-director Nicki Bland.

“The attendance has been growing remarkably,” Bland said. “The last four years have been sold out, and we’ve actually had to cut it off. And this year we had close to 100 people on our wait list.”

However, participants are not the only people involved in the event who enjoy the classes.

“The professors enjoy teaching this group of people because they know that they are there voluntarily, for one thing, and two, they are a group of people who have their own life experiences, and they aren’t going to sit back passively and let the professor roll over them,” said Jim Fagan, a Mini University participant and Bloomington resident. “They are going to speak up when they really have something to say.”

When Mini University began in the early 1970s, it was an IU-sponsored family summer camp for both children and adults, Bland said.

“We had a children’s program that went along with Mini University, so the adults went to class and the children went to day camp,” she said.

Over the years, however, Mini University has transformed into an informative and educational event for adult community members. The participants, about half of whom are IU alumni, receive information about Mini University from the IU Alumni Association in the spring and are often eager to share this information with their friends and colleagues.

“Our best advertisements are our participants,” Bland said. “They recruit their family and friends, and that’s why we’re outselling — because of our ambassadors that have attended over the years and enjoyed it. And they go back and recruit people to come with them.”

Although the program is open to the general public, the majority of the participants are 50 and older.

“I think part of it is schedules,” said Kyla Cox, director of communications and outreach for Bloomington Continuing Studies. “When you have the group that is retired, they’re more flexible with their schedule. They can come for a week and take classes. But we do actually have a lot of teachers and other educators who come that are all over the age span.”