Campus Dream
by Jeffrey Selingo
When Judy Medalia started searching for a retirement community, she wanted a place where her days would be filled with more than just crafts, lectures, and social hours. A former teacher, she craved a community where she could continue to learn new things. In some ways, Medalia, at 77, wanted to go back to college. Little did she know that's where she would end up–at Lasell Village (www.lasellvillage.com or 617-663-7000), a 171-unit retirement community on the campus of Lasell College in Newton, Massachusetts.
Now, Medalia's days are almost as busy as when she was working: Just last semester, she packed Spanish, yoga, and sculpture into her weekly class schedule, on top of attending lectures and taking field trips. "I feel so stimulated," she says. "There are all these things available to us that I never was able to experience before."
Medalia is not alone in seeking an intellectually invigorating retirement. At Lasell, for example, some 100 retirees are on a waiting list to move in to the facility. Nationwide, more than 50 retirement communities are linked to colleges, including Ithaca and Oberlin Colleges, the University of Michigan, and Pennsylvania State University. Another 30 are in the planning stages, says Leon Pastalan, director of the National Center on Housing and Living Arrangements for Older Americans.
Unlike most other college-affiliated retirement facilities where lifelong learning is an option, Lasell requires that its 200 residents complete 450 hours of learning and fitness activities a year, a mandate based on a zoning agreement with the city that allowed the village to be built. Many residents easily meet the requirement, and even those who end up moving into Lasell's on-site skilled nursing facility sometimes ask to continue their studies even though they are no longer obligated to do so. "There is a mentality about the future here rather than the past," says Paula Panchuck, the dean of Lasell Village. "Instead of, ‘My life is over,’ it's, ‘What classes are coming up in the spring?’"
About 30 courses per trimester are open only to retirees and are taught by Lasell faculty, adjunct professors, and fellow residents in classrooms at Lasell Village, located near the edge of campus. Spread throughout the village's 14 interconnected buildings are classrooms (including art studios and fitness facilities) and one- and two-bedroom apartments, many with patios and decks. About 15 percent of the village residents also enroll in regularly scheduled college courses each semester with Lasell undergraduates in the heart of the main campus.
The race to secure a spot in popular classes is as competitive among the retirees–who range in age from 67 to 97–as it is with the 1,100 Lasell undergraduates. Some residents of the retirement village are known to line up hours before registration each term to get their pick of the most sought-after village courses–usually current events, literature, and legal studies. Edith Goldstein, a retired second-grade teacher, recalls arriving for 10 a.m. registration one trimester at "three minutes to eight and I was number 64 in line."
Villagers take their studies seriously. Even though they don't take finals or receive credit, retirees are required to do all the assigned readings and write papers. The dozen students in last fall's literature course, for instance, polished off their discussion of William Faulkner's Light in August in just eight weeks (most traditional college courses run 12 weeks or more). For one of the retirees, Lillian Kaplan, it was her second Faulkner course in a year. The previous spring she read Go Down, Moses. "I hope they offer classes on all his books," says Kaplan, who also took Beginning Spanish last fall.
The learning environment goes beyond the two or three classes residents take each trimester. Being around college students, either in class, around campus, or with those who work in the retirement facility, is an advantage. Some, like Medalia, also volunteer at the college by sharing their teaching experience with undergraduates majoring in education. "We help them break through the stereotypes of older people," says Lee Miller, a former elementary school teacher, "They develop a respect for us and more of an understanding of older people."
Jeffrey Selingo is a senior editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C.
