Volunteer of the Week

Jeffrey Swoger

Jeffrey Swoger began his Osher at CMU experience as a front office volunteer, has gone on to lead classes in classical music (Richard Strauss: the Long Goodbye) and modern architecture (World Class Architecture in America’s Heartland: Columbus Indiana), and now serves on Osher’s Board of Directors and Curriculum Committee.

 He likes volunteering because “it’s the way Osher works,” Jeffrey told me. “Our volunteers are a large part of the workforce; without them, there would be no Osher.” Jeffrey enjoys his Curriculum Committee duties because they get to recruit the study leaders who offer the Osher classes.

He loves the diversity of Osher at CMU classes. As a student, he balances his courseload between the unfamiliar—“I learned in one class that the solar system isn’t exactly what I was taught in school”—and the things he’s most passionate about, among them, classical music. He’s leading the Richard Strauss class mentioned above this Fall.

He and his wife Linda, another Osher at CMU member, were partners in a graphic design business in the Chicago area before moving to Pittsburgh in 2013 to be closer to their son, a doctor in the UPMC system, and his family.