Reflections on the End of the Center’s First Three Years

The accelerated momentum for gerontological social work education, initiated and funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, was highly evident at the February 2007 Gero-Ed Forum, including the CDI and PPP meetings. From my perspective, the level of commitment and energy reflected by the over 270 participants is an indicator that the gero social work movement has reached a new level. For the past eight years of Hartford-funded curriculum development programs, staff associated with SAGE-SW, GeroRich, or the Gero-Ed Center often felt that they needed “to pull” faculty along. What appeared to shift dramatically with the 2007 Forum, however, is the emergence of a critical mass of gero-committed BSW and MSW faculty eager to further “gerontologize” social work education. These faculty are now poised to propel forward gero curricular and organizational changes. I imagine that many of us will be referring back to the 2007 Gero-Ed Forum for years to come as the time when gerontological social work “came fully of age!”

What an energizing way to close the first three years of the Gero-Ed Center. Since 2004, 70 social work programs participated fully in the CDIs, infusing gero competencies into their foundation curriculum. Over 750 faculty attended three Gero-Ed Forums. One hundred three (103) faculty participated in five Gero-Ed Institutes, our one day faculty development workshops on gerontological topics. Nine textbook authors and two editors learned ways to infuse gerontology into their foundation texts. The Gero-Ed Center Web site (www.Gero-EdCenter.org), which has served as our main portal for disseminating gero-related curricular resources, was launched in March 2005 and has since logged over 60,500 visits. Since October 2006, over 75 individuals have registered for the introductory module to our new eLearning course on planned curricular and organizational change. Finally, this eNewsletter, Aging Times, has been sent quarterly to over 3,800 CSWE members and other individuals interested in aging since January 2006.

The Center has also worked to make a lasting impact on the profession. Gains were made in terms of influencing educational policy and accreditation to advance gerontological competency-based social work education In addition, questions that include gero competencies were written for the national licensure exam, which will be an ongoing process of question-writing; the extent of gero content within 45 accreditation self-studies was analyzed; and gero statistics collected as part of CSWE’s annual statistics identify an increase in gero content within social work programs.

Gero-Ed Center staff recently submitted a renewal proposal to Hartford for an additional five years of funding. We will update you in the next Aging Times about the initiatives in the renewal. We are most appreciative of faculty who provided input into the new directions outlined in the renewal and look forward to working with many of you on multifaceted initiatives.

By Nancy R. Hooyman,
Hooyman Endowed Professor of Gerontology, University of Washington, School of Social Work
Co-Principal Investigator, CSWE Gero-Ed Center