By Linda Wiener
After working directly with older adults for about ten years I began to get a sense of the global impact of an aging world. At the time my focus was helping older adults reenter the workforce, and coaching their prospective employers, some of whom were engaged in international operations. I turned to the United Nations data bank for perspective. It took me down the proverbial rabbit hole. Eventually I expanded my Adapting to an Aging Workforce© work with employers to the national stage.
My work with midlife and older job seekers and careers changers also expanded to a larger platform as the Age Issues Expert for an international online job search portal. During that tenure I began to work with students interested in working with older adults. At the time, college and university gerontology programs focused their education on traditional models of aging; illness, disease, and allied research, generally leading to somewhat limited career options.
My research and personal experience with recareering students interested in the field of aging painted a much larger interest, and much greater market demand. It was clear to me that age specialists would be needed across all sectors and in all fields, and that almost limitless opportunity existed for the development and delivery of new products and services to our burgeoning aging population, globally, well into the 21st century.
Finding no related texts nor associated organizations addressing what to me was a glaring oversight in both educational credentialing and career development, I created the Exploring Careers in Aging© training material and its accompanying workbook and website, utilizing the material in classes I developed and taught at a college and university in my area. Soon the website reached a national audience, and around the country nearly thirty college and university gerontology programs adopted the workbook to support their students with career planning.
H.R. “Rick” Moody, the founding director of The AARP Office of Academic Affairs, shared my vision for the largely unexplored opportunities regarding careers in aging, and engaged me to lead affiliated research and author the occasional paper, The Role of Community Colleges in and Aging Society. A key takeaway from the report was the need for gerontology in higher education to develop 21st century-related coursework, and a clarion call to do so was subsequently presented at national conferences of ASA, AGHE and AACC.
Dr. Tina Kruger Newsham of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington represents a new generation of academic thought leaders in the field of aging who has accepted that challenge, and in the process has also expanded our ideas about aging. It is with respect for her professionalism and with excitement for her broad vision that the Exploring Careers in Aging torch is passed to her.