Meet Ted Gilman, BOLLI's new director
August 19, 2024
by Madison Sirois, Marketing Specialist, Rabb School of Continuing Studies
The BOLLI community is one that is constantly growing and evolving. While some of our members have been with us for a decade or more, we also have the honor of welcoming fresh faces to our program every year. This year, one of these faces is Ted Gilman — BOLLI’s new director.
Ted comes to us with nearly three decades of experience in higher education, having served as a political science professor at Union College and an executive director at two different Harvard University research centers.
While he has identified as a lifelong learner for quite some time now, Ted admits that education was not always his greatest passion. “I got through high school, but I wasn’t a motivated learner until I got to college and was able to study what I wanted,” Ted told BOLLI. “Once I discovered Japanese language and East Asian history, I was hooked.”
However, even when Ted began pursuing a master’s degree, he still did not have any intentions of entering academia. “I figured that because Japan’s economy was super strong and I was learning the language, I'd get a job in a Japanese company somewhere,” Ted explained. “But I never applied to any job. And if you don’t apply, you’re not going to get the job,” he said, laughing.
Rather than entering the world of international business, Ted ended up completing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan and soon accepted a teaching position at Union College. It is in the classroom that Ted’s love for education became fully actualized. “Creating an enjoyable learning environment was always my first priority,” Ted said. “And I was learning along with the students in a lot of cases, so that was very rewarding.”
Though Ted loved his job as a university professor, he eventually discovered that teaching was not the only way to make an impact in education. When Ted’s old academic advisor told him that Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies was looking for a new executive director, it was an opportunity too good to pass up.
“I wasn’t really looking to go into academic administration, but then I learned that as an administrator, I could create the structures within which people could do their best work,” Ted told BOLLI. Intrigued by this different side of the learning process, Ted sent in an application to Harvard — and he got the job.
“[It] was a very powerful experience,” Ted said of his time at the Reischauer Institute. Ted’s first few years as executive director were full of professional growth and discovery. “After learning about the classroom, building the frameworks to support research, scholarship, and new classes was exciting,” Ted told BOLLI.
However, the most impactful part of Ted’s experience began in 2011, when Japan was struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
“When [the disaster] happened, we totally shifted our mission and spent a lot of time helping communities that were suffering,” Ted told BOLLI. “We went up to the affected areas in Japan and helped people muck out houses or tear them down, and we provided a lot of meals for people in temporary housing.”
According to Ted, this experience in Japan “completely changed [his] life.” Not only did he assist in hands-on relief efforts, but he also worked to give local communities a voice in their own recovery and revitalization.
“The national government wanted to just make a plan and implement it, but our approach was from the bottom up,” Ted explained. “We spent a lot of time talking to fishing communities and helping them articulate their opinions, doing surveys and helping them express to the government what they thought would work best in their own communities.”
When his work in Japan was done, Ted moved on to a position at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where he was responsible for overseeing everything from Latin American politics to nuclear deterrence research and more. While taking on a more expansive role was rewarding, it was also exhausting — and eventually, Ted started to burn out. After getting the Weatherhead Center through the pandemic, he decided to take a sabbatical and leave Harvard.
During his time off, Ted applied to jobs around the world, looking into positions in the Middle East, South Asia, and throughout the United States. However, the opportunity to work at BOLLI stood out as particularly interesting. “I knew about the OLLI system, and my son graduated from Brandeis in 2021,” Ted told BOLLI. “I knew the school, and I knew I would love to work there. So I applied, and now here I am!”
As a lifelong learner himself, Ted is a big believer in BOLLI’s core values. “I'm very happy to be at BOLLI during a time when I can imagine myself eventually being a BOLLI participant,” Ted said. “During my first few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about what I would most like to learn as I get older in life, and it’s been exciting to see what BOLLI has to offer.”
Though he has only been at BOLLI for a little over a month, Ted has already begun to experience the magic of the BOLLI community. “When we have an event in person, the room is full, and it’s just stunning,” Ted commented. “Whether it’s a talk on opera or the New Yorker Fiction Salon, people show up — and they show up early.”
As an educator, Ted has come to recognize the importance of the interactions that students have with each other before and after class. “One of the things that I see as a constant in education is that there are always students who come early, not necessarily to talk to the instructor or to the speaker, but to talk to each other,” Ted reflected.
Part of Ted’s mission as director of BOLLI is to preserve these opportunities for members to socialize in-person. “I’ve noticed that food always helps with attendance — and that’s true for undergrads and for lifelong learners,” Ted said. “So that will be an important part of the BOLLI mission: to keep everybody well fed.”
Ted is also highly invested in maintaining — and growing — opportunities for BOLLI members to connect with each other virtually. “Remote learning is more accessible to those who have to stay home for health reasons, or for caregiving reasons,” he explained. “And if we want to make BOLLI more available to lifelong learners in the Boston area and beyond, we’re going to have to use remote modalities.”
Going forward, Ted hopes to share the power of BOLLI with the rest of the Brandeis community. “There’s a lot that people with more life experience have to teach to people who have less life experience,” Ted said. “The majority of our members have graduate degrees, and many have had really amazing careers. So I think that there is a mentorship matching opportunity that we could spend more energy cultivating.”
Ted also thinks that BOLLI’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs) could be an avenue for connection between BOLLI members and undergraduates. “Whether it’s through Jewish life or student clubs, there are a lot of ways for BOLLI members to engage with the campus community,” he said.
Community involvement is something that Ted holds close to his heart — both in his job and outside of work. When Ted isn’t spending time with his longtime partner, Susan, or their four boys, he volunteers regularly at the Brookline Food Pantry. He also plays pickup basketball and men’s softball, and is the keyboardist in a “dad band” called Midnight Turkey (formerly known as the “Slackademics”). Like all BOLLI members, Ted likes to put down his books occasionally and have some fun!
As Ted gets into his new role at BOLLI, he is excited to work with the community. “I’m looking forward to exploring new opportunities for BOLLI, and seeing what all of us can do together,” Ted said. “Growth and change are fun, and I plan to embrace them.”
Ted welcomes any and all BOLLI members to stop by his office if they have any ideas, concerns, or would just like to chat. To contact Ted, email him at tgilman@brandeis.edu.