Help with Expanded Navigation

Help with Expanded Navigation

Hi I am completely stuck. I need help with a jquery navigation that was created by someone else. I do not know javascript and am not very familiar with jquery other than some other troubleshooting I have done for this site. OK here is an example site:

http://staging.terry.uga.edu/spotlight

The left navigation is using a toggleClass to open and close. So, the user clicks on a top level navigation and can see the sub-navigation. But once they click on one of the sub-navs the top nav snaps closed again. It is a poor user experience that we are trying to correct.

It has been suggested that I need to use a cookie to keep the navigation expanded until the user clicks on a different top level navigation or leaves the site completely. I have just spent several hours searching through tutorials on cookies and jquery and have not found anything that has been helpful. Can someone please help me sort this out?