Colleges close generation gap

[HenryTo]

My response to this is, as always: Why didn't we think of this earlier?? I think learning history is essential and it is certainly best learned by also interacting with people who have been through those experiences:
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Colleges close generation gap

Mon Feb 21, 8:38 AM ET Top Stories - USATODAY.com

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Special for USA TODAY

When Irene Hofstein decided to spend her twilight years here beside the campus of Lasell College, she expected to be a student again, auditing courses and learning at the feet of professional educators.

Over time, however, professors and students have increasingly been learning from her - and from thousands of other retirees who have settled near college campuses in the past 15 years.

Whether the topic is the women's movement or the rise of the Third Reich, Hofstein, 84, brings firsthand experience that instructors at a number of schools consider worthy of frequent field trips to neighboring retirement homes. One recent night, students braved the cold to ask a group of retirees how they might improve communication with people four times their age.

"My biggest problem with the younger generation is they talk so fast and they don't enunciate," Hofstein says in a German accent. "You just have to speak up."

For Sarah Briggs, who has felt a void since her grandmother died a year ago, life stories told during the hour-long conversation proved intriguing.

"To think (women) weren't able to work in more than a couple of fields, it just doesn't seem possible," says Briggs, a senior from Windham, Maine. "We're definitely coming back to talk with her some more."

Across the country, retirement communities that blossomed near college campuses are now becoming attractions in their own right. Students are benefiting from seniors who have time on their hands and the desire to be part of the learning process.

At least 60 retirement communities now have a campus affiliation, and the number could be as high as 100, according to the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.

The trend has evolved quietly, but the interest is unmistakable:

• Ithaca (N.Y.) College students don't get through Michael Smith's course in modern U.S. history without hearing testimonies from Longview Retirement Community residents who lived through such events as the Great Depression and World War II.

• Students at the University of Florida in Gainesville tap the 1-year-old Oak Hammock community to practice their skills in mass communications, dentistry and veterinary medicine.

• Lasell College students regularly pick the brains of retirees for courses in market research, community service and organizational behavior. Residents volunteer as juries for mock trials and record oral histories for courses in psychology and technology.

• Oberlin (Ohio) College students have assembled retirees to be cast members in a play and subjects in a photography portfolio.

The retirement boom in college towns is built on the idea that campuses have what retirees want: youthful atmosphere, healthy lifestyle and intellectual stimulation. For this, retirees pay handsomely: At Stanford in California, for instance, they spend upward of $600,000 for a one-bedroom unit at Hyatt's Classic Residence and at least $3,100 in monthly fees.

But benefits flow both ways. "I don't think anybody foresaw what has happened, the richness over time of the interstitial relationships," says John Hennessey, former dean of Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business in Hanover, N.H., and now a resident of 14-year-old Kendal at Hanover.

Other predictions, such as retirees flocking to audit courses, haven't fully materialized, either, according to John Krout, director of the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute. "Sometimes residents come on campus, but the reality is that it's easier for the students to go to them," he says.

Not every relationship is formally orchestrated through a group. Ten residents of Kendal at Hanover, for instance, serve as mentors and companions to international students at Dartmouth. Over the past three years, resident Barbara Taylor has helped a young woman from Trinidad get to the airport and shop for boots, as well as giving her the opportunity to experience a Passover Seder. Her student tutors Taylor in personal computing.

"I always get hysterical when the damn thing doesn't work," Taylor says. "She just touches it, and it works."

As interaction increases, so do privacy and safety concerns. Longstanding policies for background screening of students who wish to interact get vigorous enforcement at Kendal at Hanover, says Brent Edgerton, associate executive director. "We have to do our due diligence when we're talking about, in many cases, the most frail residents in our health center."

At Lasell, residents live in an environment that could pass for an upscale dormitory from the outside. Inside, however, it's different. Residents get a greeting from the concierge, wait service in the dining room and filet mignon on the menu. And casual relationships with students who work there can help keep spirits up.

"My favorite part of every day is coming down to dinner, with the young wait staff," retiree Rhoda Silverman says. "I love being with them."

Close relationships between students and nearby retirees aren't yet widespread enough to be considered the norm. Even at Lasell, some students are barely aware of the 200 retirees next door.

But as baby boomers approach retirement age, Krout expects engagement between the generations near campuses to intensify.

"Older people are going to have so much to give," he says. "We'll have to figure out a way to make this happen."