Lifelong learning was always in the equation for Judy Obee

Calgarian who graduated at 76 wins AU’s 2025 Lifelong Learner Award

Not many kids are going to call their septuagenarian grandmother via videochat to get help with their math homework—but Judy Obee is hardly a typical grandmother in her 70s.  

She has always been inspired to learn: from the time she was a young child, through a mathematics degree and an impressive career in computer science, and most recently as she crossed the AU convocation stage with a Bachelor of General Studies in 2025.  

But while learning for its own sake was always part of the equation, the desire to keep her brain actively working become even more important to her after watching both parents suffer from dementia towards the end of their lives.  

“Of course, my big concern was how to prevent that happening to me,” Obee said.  

Regardless of the specific motivations, her ongoing passion for and commitment to learning has inspired many and have earned her the 2025 Lifelong Learner Award. This award recognizes an AU student or graduate who seeks to expend their knowledge and skills through continuous learning, through both formal and informal learning pathways.  

And for Obee, that inspiration was there as long as she can remember.

Lifelong learning starts at home  

Obee grew up in rural Alberta, near Pigeon Lake, to blue-collar parents. But the nature of their work did not prevent them from valuing the power of education and instilling that value in her.  

“We were fairly poor, although I didn’t realize it at the time, but my dad had a library,” she said. “He subscribed to Time magazine. He was taking a correspondence course in accounting to try to get ahead. He was a blue-collar worker but just had an interest in those kinds of things.”  

Throughout elementary and high school, she was a good student, but the one subject that grabbed her interest and attention more than any other was math. Every September, she would grab the math textbook and by the time October rolled around, she had already completed all the problems.  

This passion for math remained throughout Obee’s time in school. Not only was she at the head of her class every year, but she was also involved in extracurricular math opportunities, including writing various tests meant to challenge those with a high aptitude for math. Her own unique talents in the subject became abundantly clear to her during Grade 12.  

“I wrote the Canadian Math Congress test for the spring of 1965 and got the top mark in Alberta, which was, of course, thrilling,” she said.  

When I turned 70 in 2018, I just said, why don’t I do it? I’ve always wanted to. And if I wait, I might run out of time.

Judy Obee, 2025 Lifelong Learner Award winner

A ‘country girl’ going to university  

But as a self-described “country girl,” Obee said the career opportunities she saw for women were limited. She mostly saw women working as shopkeepers or teachers. So, when it came time to go to university, she planned to study education and become a math teacher.  

Her plan to earn an education degree did not last long. She was thriving in her math courses, earning marks in the high 90s. But for the education, psychology, and administration type courses, she was getting marks in the 50s and 60s.  

This did not sit well with her, so she chose to lean into her strengths and transferred into mathematics. She completed that degree with honours, even though she wasn’t sure how that would translate into earning a living.  

“In fourth year, I said to myself, so what do mathematicians do for a living? Some people think of that a little earlier,” Obee recalled with a laugh.  

As she had also taken some computing classes in university, she decided to pursue a career working with computers, which at the time was very new career path. She was hired right out of university as a junior programmer.  

Learning on the job in information technology  

Obee said she did not experience any of the kinds of sexism one might now associate with a career in computers—her classes had been roughly half women, and of the seven students her first employer hired, four were women.  

“It was very cool to be part of a gender-equal career. And it was very disconcerting to realize several years later that something had happened to make it gendered,” she said.  

For her, though, experience and capabilities outweighed any gender stereotypes that may have crept into the industry over the years. Throughout her career, she took advantage of one learning opportunity after another and brought that knowledge back to her colleagues to teach it to them in turn.  

Obee earned dozens of technical certifications over the years and often created in-house courses to share knowledge with colleagues.  

“I always wanted to be a teacher, and still want to be a teacher,” she said.  

In the early 2000s, she also completed an 11-course management certificate program through SAIT in Calgary, Alta., in which all coursework was completed online. This experience made her realize how valuable online learning could be, and that it was absolutely the right fit for her.  

“I was working full time. The concept of going to a class was such a pain,” she said. “It was cool when I was 18, but it’s not that way anymore.”  

Teaching and learning in retirement  

When Obee retired, she was not the sort of person to sit idly. Rather, she started a sewing and knitting school to continue teaching and learning. This also allowed her to continue with a hobby that didn’t have as much personal benefit for her anymore—there are only so many pairs of knitted socks and scarves a person needs.  

“One of my specialties was teaching little kids to sew,” she said. “There were some kids I taught who I had for 10 years. They were cool kids and grew up right in front of me!”  

She closed the sewing school in 2015, and a few years later decided it was time to become a student again. And having watched as her parents struggled with dementia in her old age, she knew it was important to keep her mind active to help reduce the risk for herself.  

Obee had always known she wanted to go back to school at some point, but the realities of working and raising a family had always prevented her from doing so.  

“When I turned 70 in 2018, I just said, why don’t I do it? I’ve always wanted to. And if I wait, I might run out of time.”  

Knowing that online learning was a great format for her, she did a bit of research and found AU’s Bachelor of General Studies program. She immediately loved the idea of being able to take whatever kinds of courses appealed to her, so she registered and did just that.  

‘So much cool stuff to know’  

After having struggled with non-math courses so much earlier in life, Obee decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and took a humanities class first. It turns out that a career writing reports, training manuals, and in-house courses had had a big impact—she got an A- in that first class.  

“I was absolutely thrilled. There were essays and exams, and I did pretty good in it,” she said. “That blew my mind, because it was not my strength.”  

For the next several years she took whatever courses interested her, including courses that ended up being similar to what her grandsons were learning in their high school AP courses. So now, in addition to helping them with their math homework, they were coming to her for support with essay writing and research.  

As for Obee, the learning journey isn’t finished. Although she has no desire to earn another degree, she plans to continue taking courses at AU on an audit basis. Auditing a class doesn’t earn course credit but still gives a learner the opportunity to get feedback from an instructor.  

“The feedback is important for me for my base goal of exercising the brain. I don’t need the stress of a final,” she said. “I want to have fun and learn new stuff. There’s so much cool stuff to know.”

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