At NMH Perennial College, we believe that education should be a lifelong process. Learning alongside a group of peers can be an empowering experience during significant life transitions, such as a move, a new job, a newly empty nest, retirement, or widowhood or divorce.
American Transcendentalism and The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence: 250 Years Later with Dr. Samantha Harvey and Dr. David Adler. The seven day program includes seven classes with each course and two outings: Concord Massachusetts, site of the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the houses of R. W. Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and H. D. Thoreau and a visit to Fruitlands, a Transcendentalist utopian community and site of the Fruitlands Art Museum. We also will enjoy nearby outings and campus activities including wine-tasting, movie night, ice cream stands and brewery visits, nature walks, and other local delights.
NMH Perennial College presents an opportunity to recreate some of your most cherished moments from college, from Sunday brunch with friends in the dining hall to walks on campus trails to classes outside under a tree.
Best of all, NMH Perennial College allows you to consider the great questions from the vantage point of maturity — as William Wordsworth described it, “in years that bring the philosophic mind” — in a group of like-minded learners eager to bring their life experiences and wisdom into the classroom again.
NMH Perennial College 2026 Program Leaders
Samantha C. Harvey
Boise State University
Dr. Harvey is the Founder and Creative Director of Perennial College at NMH. She is a graduate of Harvard and Cambridge University and has published books and articles on nineteenth-century British poetry and prose, transatlantic Romanticism, and the environmental humanities. In 2012 she started an annual public lecture series called “The Idea of Nature” which brings three internationally known lecturers to Boise State every spring.
Dr. David Adler
David Gray Adler has lectured nationally and internationally, and taught courses at all three of Idaho’s universities, on the Constitution, presidential power and the Bill of Rights. His scholarly writings have been quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court and by both Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress. Adler is the author of six books and 100 scholarly articles in the leading journals in his field and has delivered more than 900 public lectures. He writes a weekly column on the Constitution that runs in more than 70 newspapers.