By professors emeriti. For students emeriti.

Remember those intimate seminars at Yale? The gently leading questions from the professor, the varied opinions on the week’s reading, the one guy who just won’t stop talking? If you miss all that, the Association of Yale Alumni may have something for you.

This fall, the AYA kicks off a pilot program called Yale Alumni College, offering six-week not-for-credit seminars in New York and New Haven for alumni and their family members. Taught by retired Yale professors, the seminars will enroll between 12 and 20 people and will meet weekly. Alumni pay $100 for an annual membership and $300 for each six-week seminar.

There are six seminars on offer this fall, some offered in both locations. The topics range from Paradise Lost to the ideas of Einstein.

The Alumni College plan was devised by a nine-person team of alumni volunteers. Marv Berenblum ’56, the chair of the coordinating committee, says that if the pilot is successful, the Alumni College will launch on a more permanent basis next fall.

Yale College recently launched a summer program for alumni called Yale for Life, with intensive seminars of seven to ten days in New Haven. The Alumni College offerings, which are less expensive and less of a time commitment, fill a different niche, Berenblum says.

An e-mail announcement to New York and New Haven–area alumni on July 24 secured the first group of students for the seminars. Registration is closed for the fall semester, which begins in October, but you can find out more about the program at aya.yale.edu/learn.