NIU gerontology program
targets graying nation

by Mark McGowan

Everyone knows scores of elderly people.

Maybe it’s their dad, or their grandma, or a great uncle. Maybe it’s their next-door neighbor, or the woman who runs the church bake sale, or the friendly old fellow behind the counter at the lakeside bait-and-tackle shop. Maybe it’s a shut-in who receives Meals on Wheels.

Soon, though, everyone will know a countless number of senior citizens as the nation’s elderly population explodes.

The first members of the Baby Boom generation – those born in 1946, the requisite nine months after World War II ended – have received the American Association of Retired Peoples’ “Modern Maturity” magazine in the mail for years, and are only three years from turning 60.

And yet the country is mostly unprepared for this rapidly approaching onslaught of aging residents, whose growing sophistication and incredible demand for goods and services will tax both industry and government.

NIU’s gerontology program – “designed to play a part in meeting the health-related needs and challenges of the fastest-growing segment of the American population” – is working to change that.

“A young person who is going for a marketing degree without taking a gerontology minor is going to be missing something. The market is graying,” said John Stolte, the program director. “People need to be sensitive to the culture.”

The program, housed in the College of Health and Human Sciences for a decade, began in 1986. It offers either a minor to undergraduates (between 30 to 35 usually are enrolled) or a graduate certificate to graduate students (between eight and 12).

Students come from a wide variety of majors, from the expected, such as nursing, communicative disorders, physical therapy and psychology, to the innovative, such as business, education or public administration.

Careers in education, employment, finance, housing, legal aid, medical service, mental health, nutrition, recreation and more await graduates.

Meanwhile, Stolte said, the program is experiencing “exciting” changes as new professors from a dozen departments or schools in three different colleges have started to teach courses, diverse types of students have enrolled and a stronger outreach push has blossomed.

The program now staffs and supports a team-taught “Issues in Gerontology” course. Distance-learning options will become available in the spring.

“Non-traditional” students are enrolling, Stolte said, “like a middle-aged mother with teenagers, a husband and elderly parents. She signs up for classes because caring for her parents is a problem for her. Or the professional who realizes we’re moving toward an older population.”

A student organization is together and progressing. Service projects to the local elderly community are flourishing. Word is spreading about NIU’s tuition breaks for senior citizens. “We’re able to begin explicitly trying to contribute at the local level,” Stolte said.

But the task of preparation is one shared by an entire nation.

“We will all come to the realization in the not-distant future that we have to change things, and change them for the better,” Stolte said. “We have to overcome some really, really outdated stereotypes.”

He points to the frequent tales of workers age 50 and beyond losing jobs to members of the younger generation, a trend based on “myths” that older employees have less to offer. “People with great talent, experience and wisdom will be left out,” he said. “The older people lose. The organizations lose.”

Meanwhile, he said, business and government need to hire workers with a strong knowledge of gerontology.

“The elderly are becoming politically active. They vote – and they can get organized around an issue,” Stolte said. “People need to know about health and aging and how they intersect. The government is tweaking Medicare to help satisfy people’s needs for prescription drugs. Billions of dollars are riding on this decision.”

The challenge is to convince traditional college-age students, many as young as 17, about the need to round off their education with courses in gerontology. American society has “a natural tendency for age segregation,” he said, as “older people are relegated to gated communities, or high rises.”

Students in NIU’s gerontology program, however, are going into local nursing homes and senior centers to meet and befriend the elderly who live or visit there, sometimes to teach them physical fitness activities or sometimes to simply chat or to take a walk or a drive. Eyes are opened to similarities across the age span.

“Intergenerational contact is crucial,” he said. “Young people can get excited. They can ask questions and get a vivid sense of history.”

As for Stolte, he’s not worried about the future.

“We may go through some tough years,” he said, “but I think we as a people get ready in a hurry.”

9-29-03