Gerontology Student Organization hosts ‘Careers in Aging’ week
by Mark McGowan
Baby boomers – those Americans between the ages of 40 and 60 – are accustomed to playing the scapegoat as they collectively move through life and take the blame for straining this system and that.
And now, as their generation hurdles toward retirement and its older members approach “the golden years,” their children and grandchildren are preparing to care for a vast population of elderly people.
Yet a shortage of workers is expected – and the NIU Gerontology Student Organization is hoping to shore up the troops through “Careers in Aging” week.
Scheduled for the week of April 11, the events include a discussion of careers and internships in fields serving older adults, a role-playing activity that puts participants in the shoes of elderly adults, a trivia game designed to keep aging minds sharp and a movie.
All events are open to the public. Call (815) 753-0853 for more information.
“We’re trying to get the word out that people have to be better prepared for dealing with the baby boomers as they age and dealing with the various needs they’re going to have,” said Carolinda Douglass, a professor in the School of Allied Health Professions and adviser to the GSO.
“We’re hoping to provide students with ideas as far as internships and jobs and what types of jobs they could have working with older adults, which just doesn’t mean working in a nursing home, which is what a lot of people think,” said Irene Kostiwa, president of the organization and an undergraduate student in psychology. “.”
Speakers at the panel, scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, April 11, in Room 103A of Wirtz Hall, include public health officials, nursing home administrators, marketing and business development specialists, geriatric social workers, gerontological researchers, speech-language pathologists and nutritionists.
Each will speak for 10 minutes and later take questions, Kostiwa said.
Two rounds of “The Aging Game Workshop” will work to improve the sensitivity of those students planning careers in the aging field. The role-playing activity takes place at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, and 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 14, in Room 132 of McMurray Hall.
Participants wear glasses smeared in Vaseline to blur their vision and earplugs to diminish their hearing, Douglass said, and are treated as though they’re cognitively impaired. Medical students at the University of Minnesota Medical School play the game extensively to improve their appreciation of the special needs of geriatric patients.
“We want students to experience both more-sensitive and less-sensitive caregivers,” she said. “We’re trying to create a more person-centered focus on caregiving by offering a more empathetic feel of what it’s like to be older.”
Students and senior citizens from the community will play Acuity, a Web-based trivia game similar to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and “Trivial Pursuit,” at noon Wednesday, April 13, in Wirtz 103A.
One squad in the tourney will include at least two participants in NIU’s Lifelong Learning Institute teamed with students for an intergenerational experience.
Alan Robinson, director of outreach for the College of Health and Human Sciences, developed the game and officiates tournaments every other Saturday morning at three senior centers in DeKalb and Scyamore.
The game has 3,600 questions in 43 categories. Players choose four of their five categories from a randomly generated selection while the computer picks the fifth. Points are weighted based on difficulty, and wrong answers cost half their point value.
“It’s just kind of fun,” said Robinson, who is showing the game to people in Naperville and Rockford and exhibiting it at health fairs. “We’re getting quite a bit of attention with it, and it continues to grow. We keep tweaking the game a little bit based on the feedback we get.”
Robinson presides over a group of a dozen Alzheimer’s patients at Arden Courts in Geneva who play Acuity – and are sending a team to DeKalb for the April 13 tournament. (Oak Crest Retirement Center also will dispatch a team.)
The Alzheimer’s patients perform “really, really well,” Robinson said, prompting him and Douglass to pursue funding for summertime research on how the game affects their mental abilities and their social well-being.
“They like the simulation of it, but it’s quite remarkable that they keep their attention on it,” Robinson said. “There are 4.5 million people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in this country already, and the incidence will increase. This is a tool that could have a direct impact if played on a regular basis, so we’re excited.”
Anyone can play a sample game of Acuity at www.acuity.ws.
Nick Cassavetes’ 2004 movie “The Notebook,” starring James Garner and Gena Rowlands, will close the week with a free 5 p.m. screening Thursday, April 14, in Wirtz 216. Free popcorn and beverages will be provided while supplies last.
The week of activities also strives to shine a favorable light on the elderly.
“Society looks at aging in a negative way. It’s just not a really glamorous type of thing,” Kostiwa said. “I’ve noticed from being in psychology that most students are interested in working with children, or they look at aging in a negative way, which is unfortunate because most people age in a healthy way.”
One event – a speech on the pending privatization of Social Security – will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 28, in Room 216 of Wirtz Hall to accommodate the speaker’s schedule. University of California-Los Angeles Professor Fernando Torres-Gill is director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging, associate dean of the School of Social Welfare and Public Policy and associate director of the UCLA Center on Aging.
NIU’s gerontology 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.
For more information, call (815) 753-0031.
4-11-05
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