The Reynolda Gerontology Program is the branch of the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging which is located on the Reynolda Campus of Wake Forest University in 201-205 Carswell Hall. Its mission is to generate interest in aging among faculty members and students. Dr. Charles F. Longino, Jr., who is the associate director for Reynolda Campus programs of the Sticht Center, is the director of the RGP.

The Program's first major project was a three-year faculty development program funded by local foundations, called the Spire of Excellence in Gerontology. By co-sponsoring a conference with the Appalachian Geriatric Education Center in 1992, and through a Sticht Center Faculty Retreat, the RGP has mobilized faculty members from 15 departments and 8 administrative programs who have participated in its early efforts.

Programmatic efforts have concentrated on course development. The "Interdisciplinary Seminar on Aging" was offered for the first time in the Spring of 1993; "Images of Aging in the Humanities" was offered in the fall of 1993. Departmental course spin-offs from the first interdisciplinary course, are: Biology of Aging, Physiology of Aging (Health and Sport Sciences), Economics of Aging, and Family Relationships and Aging (Sociology).

The Reynolda Gerontology Program has provided summer study awards for several professors in preparation for offering a new course in aging, or enriching the aging content of an existing course: History Professor Ed Hendricks studied at the Institute on Oral History at Baylor University; Economics Professor Robert Whaples attended the NIA Summer Research Institute; Sociology Professor John Earle studied at the University of Florida, and Health and Sport Sciences Professor Paul Ribisl attended Stanford University.

The RGP has also sponsored the speaking engagements of several professors on the Wake Forest University campus. These include Dr. Tom Charlton, Baylor University (oral history); Dr. Burton Halpert, University of Missouri (Rural Aging); Dr. John Murphy, University of Miami (Social Philosophy); Dr. George Roth, from the NIA Lab in Baltimore (Nutritional Restriction and Longevity); and Dr. Sally Bould, University of Delaware (the Oldest Old).

The Program makes a concerted effort to support researchers; several secondary data sets are made available to these individuals working in the social sciences through the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.

In the fall of 1997, the RGP established a periodic brown bag luncheon discussion on faculty research in aging for members of the Wake Forest University faculty. Two faculty forums supportive of aging education and inquiry have been planned for the fall and spring.

Wake Forest University hosted the officers' retreat of the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education in July, 1997. The organization's national meeting was held in Winston-Salem in February, 1998.

Aging, like life itself, does not belong to one academic discipline. As an issue, aging is an important part of our culture and as such, has been dealt with in the religious, philosophical and aesthetic literatures of all human traditions, including our own. As an object of study, it is interdisciplinary by its very nature.

This university, unlike most others, encourages an interdisciplinary approach to numerous topics. This is good for the student because truth is too big and gets caught in the cracks between disciplinary paradigms. But it is bad for the faculty, because our scholarly lives are organized, evaluated and rewarded by academic disciplines and their organizational manifestations (academic departments, professional societies and credentialing boards). Our contribution to these courses, therefore, are labors of love and intellectual adventures. We are offering them above our normal teaching duties because we think it is important to stand back and look at the big picture once in a while to view and admire the whole canvas.

Both courses are taught by a variety of faculty members from numerous departments at both Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine for hand-picked undergraduate students and graduate students. The courses are unusual intellectual opportunities.

Humanities 357

This course is, therefore, an interdisciplinary presentation and discussion of aging in several of the liberal arts, including not only the literatures, but also the visual arts and a consideration of historical development of views of aging and images of aging in contemporary culture.

Selections from the Bible and comparative religions, Homer, Plato, Cicero, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's King Lear and the Tempest, and Kurasawa's film Ran are some of the course readings at various times the course is offered.

Humanities 390

This is a course almost entirely about human aging. Nearly half of the course will look at the aging human body, drawing scientific knowledge from cell biology, physical anthropology, physiology, nutrition, and neurobiology. Cognitive impairment and aging concludes the first part of the course. The second half of the course will begin with an examination of older Americans from a demographic perspective. Next, students will consider the historical understandings of society as it guides and gives social meaning to aging. Then, three contexts of aging are considered: the family, legal advocacy, and economic status. So, this is primarily a science and social science course.

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