Gerontology Institute
Action Plan
FY 2007 – FY 2011
7/7/06
During the 2004-05 academic year, the Gerontology Institute conducted an Academic Program Review of the period FY 2000 – FY 2004. This Action Plan is based on: 1) the Self-Study Report of that review, submitted on December 1, 2004; 2) the Dean’s Response to the Self-Study Report, submitted January 25, 2005; 3) the Report of the External Review Team, submitted in February, 2005; and 4) the APACE Report of the Academic Program Review Subcommittee of APACE, approved by APACE on April 14, 2005. Each of these documents concludes that the Gerontology Institute has made significant progress since its last review as a research center in 1998, especially in its record of sponsored research and publication, culminating in the establishment of a master’s program in gerontology in fall, 2004. The consensus of these reports is that the Institute has created a firm base on which to build an even stronger department over the next five years but needs a tenure-track faculty and other infrastructure to accomplish its goals.
Current Profile
The Gerontology Institute dates its origin to 1973 when the Department of Sociology initiated a special track in the sociology of aging within its master’s degree program. With the creation in 1977 of a graduate certificate in gerontology and one year later of the Gerontology Center to coordinate that credential, the basic structure of the current institute was established. Since then, 443 students have earned certificates in gerontology through the Gerontology Center (now Institute). In 1995, the Provost reorganized the Center, placing it in his Office and directing it to launch a major research program.
In addition to an affiliated faculty of 17 representing 10 separate departments and schools, the Gerontology Institute currently has a core staff of 8, including one tenure-track professor (the director, who also holds a 50% appointment in sociology), 3 non-tenure-track assistant research professors (one of whom is totally grant-supported), a visiting assistant professor, an assistant director for academic programs, a research coordinator (.5 EFT), and an administrative coordinator (.5 EFT). (One new TT assistant professor has just been hired for FY07 with funds from the Urban Health Initiative.) Five of the current positions are devoted entirely to research, while the instructional programs are staffed by only one full-time staff person and approximately half the director’s time. Most research in the Institute is supported by extramural grants and contracts, 4 of which have come from the National Institute on Aging (NIH). All faculty are actively publishing in scholarly journals, and a monograph based on a foundation grant and co-authored by the 4 Institute faculty and 2 graduate students has just been published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Institute offers a master’s degree in gerontology along with both a graduate and an undergraduate certificate in gerontology. The master’s program admitted its first class of 7 students in fall, 2004, and a second class of 8 in fall, 2005. The third class of 9 students has been admitted for fall, 2006. The first graduates are expected in August 2006. Courses are taught primarily by the affiliated tenure-track faculty (those in other departments).
Progress Since Last Review
At the time of the Institute’s last review in 1998, we were only two years along in building our new research program. We had only a director and one research faculty member and had secured only 2 small extramural contracts to support our research on long-term care. We had presented several papers at professional meetings but had not yet published a paper based on our research. We had not yet begun planning for the master’s curriculum or initiated a development campaign. Still, we had laid a firm foundation for building a research program that now is well supported, highly productive, and nationally known for our explorations of life and work within Georgia’s assisted living communities.
In the intervening years, the Institute has become a thriving center for aging research, with an experienced research faculty who have been quite successful in obtaining federal grants and publishing their work in the best journals. The research faculty has grown to 4.5 EFT, with 2 of these positions supported extramurally. The research program has matured into two separate teams pursuing different problems, and both have been successful in attracting federal grant support. In the past 7 years, the Institute’s full-time core faculty have received over $1.8 million in extramural research support, presented over 40 papers at professional meetings, and published 19 articles and chapters and one book with a prestigious university press. Graduate students are involved in nearly every project and encouraged to develop as researchers and professionals in gerontology.
Since our last review the master’s degree program has been planned and implemented, and an extensive curriculum to support it is largely in place. An ambitious development campaign has been launched to raise money for student scholarships, resulting thus far in endowments and gifts of over $110,000. Three-fourths of the most recent entering class was supported with GRAs, and over 60 percent received scholarships.
In addition, the Institute participated in the successful effort to establish the Partnership for Urban Health Research and has been designated to receive one new tenure-track position in FY07, with which we plan to hire a psychologist of aging with research and teaching interests in health behavior and research methods. The Institute also maintains a research and teaching partnership with Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and is working with several Kenyan and American partners to create a significant intervention research project to support East African grandparents caring for their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS.
While yet a relatively small unit, the Gerontology Institute has clearly demonstrated over the last 10 years the vast potential for research funding in gerontology and the societal demand for trained professionals and scholars in the field. All data collected during this review point to the conclusion that the Gerontology Institute is poised for exciting growth and, with an appropriate investment of resources, can make significant contributions to both the university and the State of Georgia.
Recommended Action Plan: FY 07 – FY 11
Based on the findings of our program review and recommendations of the external reviewers and APACE, the Institute will seek to increase the size and strength of its master’s program and continue to support its interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate certificate programs. Having only recently become a unit of the College of Arts and Sciences, our aim is to contribute to the College’s reputation for high-quality academic and research programs, while continuing to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary scholarship.
Since the Institute has focused most of its resources on building a research base, we currently have only one tenure-track faculty member, the director, who also holds a 0.5 EFT appointment in Sociology, with one more being added in fall, 2006. The other 3 core faculty hold NTT research positions, only 2 of which are funded by the university. [In fall, 2005, the Institute added a visiting assistant professor who is supported by a two-year post-doctoral research appointment from the Social Science Research Council of Canada.]
In keeping with our external reviewers’ recommendations to expand the master’s program and improve its quality and administrative efficiency, we propose to make several staffing, curricular, and scheduling changes. First, we must take responsibility for offering more of our own courses. Because the Institute’s director is the only regular instructor of gerontology courses among its full-time faculty, the Institute currently must rely on 6 other departments to supply instructors and schedule the majority of the courses our students take. All of these instructors are among the Institute’s “affiliated faculty.” Evidence of this system’s unreliability can be seen in the effect that retirement or departure of 4 of the long-time affiliated faculty members (in Psychology, Anthropology and Geography, Nursing, and Social Work) has had on our offerings. Over the past 5 years, we have struggled to provide our students with the required courses and appropriate electives. Several students have had to extend their programs of study because of the unavailability of courses, and others have not been able to complete certificates within their degree requirements and never finished our program. None of the departments in question has hired a replacement that is qualified to teach gerontology or, to our knowledge, has any plan to do so. Consequently, we have developed a curriculum and scheduling plan (see Tables 1 and 2) that reduces, though does not eliminate, our reliance on other departments for the courses required for our programs. We think it prudent not to wait and hope other departments will recruit and retain faculty qualified to teach gerontology courses but propose to undertake that task ourselves. Our first step will be to reduce funding for our two full-time NTT research faculty (Ball and King) to 0.5 EFT, using the budget savings to fund one new TT position. We propose to add faculty who can both teach course exclusively for our graduate students and share the teaching of certain courses with existing instructors in other departments, perhaps alternating responsibility for the course.
A second major change will improve the quality of the course offerings by abandoning the long-standing practice of cross-listing graduate courses with undergraduate courses and teaching them concurrently. This response to limited faculty instructional resources, which we have used for 5 course pairs (4 of which are required courses), while pragmatic and efficient, is educationally unsound and not recommended by the university’s accrediting body. We propose to move away from this practice.
To accomplish these goals, 3 tenure-track faculty are needed in addition to the Urban Health faculty member just hired. The following tables demonstrate the dimensions of this need by charting the course requirements of the Institute’s academic programs and faculty currently available to teach them.
TABLE 1
Courses Needed for Undergraduate
Certificate Program in Gerontology:
By Current Faculty Status and Availability
Full-time Affiliated None
Faculty Faculty
SOCI/GERO 4116 Aging and Society* X X
PSYC/GERO 4260 Psychology of Aging X
HHS/GERO 4200 Health and the Older Adult* X X
SOCI/GERO 4110 Aging Policy and Services X
SOCI/GERO 4122 Death, Dying, and Loss* X X
SW/GERO 4260 Social Work with the Aging X
SOCI/GERO 4xxx Ethnicity and Aging X
ANTH/GERO 4500 Anthropology of Aging X
SPCH/GERO 4475 Communication and Aging X
GERO 4xxx Family and Aging X
GERO 4910 Gerontology Internship X
COURSES REQUIRED / NEEDED FOR UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM
WITH NO TENURE-TRACK FACULTY TO TEACH 5
*UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TO BE SHARED
BY EXISTING AFFILIATED FACULTY AND FUTURE FULL-TIME FACULTY: 3 (= 1.5 / year)
TOTAL NUMBER UNDERGRADUATE COURSES NEEDED / YEAR 6.5
WITH NO CURRENT TT FACULTY
TABLE 2
Recommended Course Schedule for M.A. in Gerontology*
Faculty Status and Availability
Year 1 Full-time Affiliated None
Fall Semester Faculty Faculty
GERO 8000 Seminar in Gerontology x
GERO 8100 Gerontological Research Methods X
GERO 8116 Sociology of Aging x
GERO 7610 Psychology of Aging X
Spring Semester
GERO 7110 Aging Policy and Services X
GERO 7200 Health and the Older Adult# X
GERO 7260 Social Work with the Aging*** X
GERO 8xxx Program Evaluation Research** X
Elective Options: Anthropology of Aging X
Communication and Aging X
Life Course Sociology X
Summer Semester
GERO 8910 Gerontology Internship*** X
GERO 8990 Research Practicum**# X X
Elective Health Promotion and Aging X
Year 2
Fall Semester
GERO 8124 Ethnicity and Aging** X
GERO 8xxx Economics of Aging*** X
GERO 8200 Aging Program Administration*** X
Elective Options: Death, Dying, and Loss# X X
Global Aging & Social Policy X
Aging and Long-Term Care X
Spring Semester
GERO 8999 Thesis Research# X X
*Includes Grad. Certificate Program **Research Track Requirement ***Administrative Track Requirement
NUMBER GRADUATE COURSES REQUIRED EACH YEAR
WITH NO TENURE-TRACK FACULTY TO TEACH 11
#GRADUATE COURSES TO BE SHARED
BY EXISTING AFFILIATED FACULTY AND FUTURE FULL-TIME FACULTY 2 (= 1/year)
TOTAL NUMBER GRADUATE COURSES NEEDED / YEAR 12
TOTAL NUMBER COURSES REQUIRED / YEAR FOR ALL GERONTOLOGY PROGRAMS
WITH NO TENURE-TRACK FACULTY TO TEACH THEM 18.5
As shown above, we project 16 courses (11 graduate and 5 undergraduate) must be taught only by full-time Institute faculty, either because they are not appropriate for other departments or because those departments currently have no qualified tenure-track instructor to teach them. We also project that 5 courses (2 graduate and 3 undergraduate) should evolve to a shared-responsibility model, being taught in alternate years by full-time faculty and affiliated faculty to allow them to be offered with greater frequency, and we propose that 5 courses continue to be offered only by their current departments. Allowing a one-half course load per year for shared courses yields an unmet need for 18.5 courses per year. The projected addition of the Urban Health psychologist in FY07 will add 4 courses to the Institute’s instructional capacity, leaving 14.5 courses unaccounted for annually, or approximately 3 full-time positions. We request, therefore, approval for an additional 3 tenure-track faculty, to be allocated over Years 2-5 of the Action Plan, as follows:
Year 1: Psychologist of Aging with research and teaching interest in health behavior and research methods. Will teach both graduate and undergraduate courses in psychology of aging and the graduate courses in research methods and program evaluation (already hired with funds from Urban Health Partnership).
Year 2: Anthropologist or sociologist with research and teaching focus in aging, ethnicity, and cross-cultural studies. Would teach anthropology of aging courses, ethnicity of aging, and share sociology of aging and family and aging courses. We propose converting our two 1.0 EFT NTT research faculty positions to 0.5 EFT to fund this TT position.
Years 3-5: Community health gerontologist with research and teaching interest in public health, health promotion, and long-term care. Would teach graduate and undergraduate courses in health and aging.
Political gerontologist with research and teaching focus on aging policy, program administration, and services for the elderly. Will teach the aging program administration course and will share the aging policy and services course. Depending on discipline, may also teach politics and aging.