Our History

RENESAN was established in 1996, when a group of Santa Fe residents decided to arrange academic courses for retired people. Through the years the educational nonprofit has developed its own identity, but, initially it drew heavily on programming offered by the International Elderhostel Institute  Network (now Road Scholars) and a Wisconsin-based organization called PLATO (Participating Learning And Teaching Organization).

Long-time RENESAN leader Karl Kregor credits the organization’s first President, Helen Aarli, with developing the concept and generating the interest that launched RENESAN.

Renesan lifelong learning faculty

“In 1995, Helen called the College of Santa Fe (the former Santa Fe Arts College), which was thriving at the time. There was a woman there named Mary Ann Fellows, who was regional director of Elderhostel,” Kregor recalls.

“The two met and came up with the idea of sending a letter to the Elderhostel list of Santa Fe zip codes asking if people would be interested in a PLATO-like organization. It worked. A couple of weeks later about 35 people showed up at College of Santa Fe. The group soon coalesced and begin working out the nuts and bolts. Some of the people in the group were teachers or people with a strong interest in a specific area,” Kregor says.

Renesan lifelong learning photo credit Daniel Quat Photography

Photos by Daniel Quat Photography

A New Home Base

For a time, we were loosely affiliated with Elderhostel and held classes at the College of Santa Fe.  We soon ran out of space there and in 2003 we began renting office and classroom space at St. John’s United Methodist Church, on the corner of Old Pecos Trail and Cordova Rd. Since then this relationship has grown.

Today almost all of RENESAN’s courses and lectures are held at St. John’s, a mutually beneficial relationship that continues to thrive.

Milestones

In 1999, the organization had 300 students attending 16 courses, five lectures, and a night walk at Bandelier National Monument. Since then,

we have seen consistent, often exponential, growth.

In 2004, we launched our website, which was most recently redesigned in 2019. In 2013 we began offering online registration, making the process more accessible to a broad audience as well as less time consuming for our staff and volunteers.

As we approach our 25th anniversary, RENESAN consistently schedules over 60 courses, lectures, and trips each semester, selling over 2,200 spots to a still-growing group of more than 800 active students.

Board Members Curriculum Committee Faculty Staff Who We Are Mission History