Living Words: Intergenerational conversations through creative engagement workshops
Application questions:
- Describe the proposed project
Brief Summary (details follow):
What: Creativity workshops with emphasis on writing/storytelling, but also to include other art forms.
Who: Wofford undergraduate students (N ≈ 100) and low-income older adults (N ≈ 200) would engage through workshops. Student workshop participants would be identified through academic courses or co-curricular programs, such as student organizations. Low-income older adults from Spartanburg County would be identified though community centers and care facilities. Approximately 10 undergraduate student leaders funded through this grant (named “Intergenerational Fellows”) would develop, lead and assess the workshops in 2017-18. The project will be led by Dr. Kara Bopp, Associate Professor of Psychology, who has conducted research in the field of cognitive aging for over 20 years. Jessalyn Story, Director of Wofford’s Center for Community-Based Learning will partner on the project with Dr. Bopp to ensure optimal interaction with community partners and to help other professors and student groups determine how they can participate in the project.
Where: In Spartanburg County at 6 community centers (where senior programming takes place) and 4 continuing care facilities that primarily support Medicaid residents. The “community” for this project is defined as county-wide, and “community members” include older adults living within that footprint. Wofford is located on the Northside of Spartanburg County within the city limits. All 10 locations are within 12 mile radius of campus; 5 of the locations are within 5 miles of campus (a walk to 10-minute drive).
When: Weekly 1-hour workshops would take place for 10-week sessions during the Fall and Spring semesters. The proposal is for the first year of implementation (school year 2017-18), but it is anticipated that workshops would continue through leadership of individuals involved in workshops (students, older adults and/or activity directors at the community centers and care facilities).
How: During each hour-long workshop, the student workshop leader would introduce an activity, allow older adults and students to discuss the prompt, spend time working independently, then share what they have created or their thoughts about the activity in order to provide opportunity for reflection and intergenerational conversations to take place.
Why: Personal connections and intergenerational interaction forged through the workshops will support the social, cognitive and emotional needs of the older adult participants and help combat feelings of isolation. The project aligns with the goals of a liberal arts education by providing intentional learning opportunities for undergraduate participants that will enrich their academic and personal growth, support their persistence in college, promote leadership development, and demonstrate the ability to have a lasting impact on their communities.
Project details
Wofford is requesting funding that will provide student stipends to approximately 10 undergraduate students, to be called “Intergenerational Fellows”. In order to develop and document the creativity workshops, these students would each be tasked with planning, implementing, assessing and documenting 10 weeks of workshops in the fall and spring semesters of 2017-18 at their own designated location (community center or continuing care facility).
The Fellows will plan activities for workshops (writing or other creative activities) for the appropriate level (considering the older adults’ physical and/or cognitive ability) and interests of the older adults (“OA”), participating faculty’s class, or other participating students. Fellows will lead workshops with 8 to 16 participants that will include OA and student participants, in which there will be either an equal or larger number of OA participants compared to students in the workshops. Fellows will also assess and document the program so that it can be improved, disseminated and documented in order to continue in the future.
Community centers, part of Spartanburg County Parks and Recreation, have a program in place that identifies low-income OA as 60 years or older with an income of $11K or lower per year. The county has already identified 150 OA that participate in free programming and lunch, with hopes to continue to increase the number of participants. It is expected that approximately 200 OA (150 from community centers and 50 from care facilities) and approximately 100 undergraduates (60 from courses and 40 from student groups) would engage in workshops over the first year of the program. In the first year, students from approximately 3 courses (~12 students enrolled in each) would be expected to participate each semester in all 10-weeks of workshops (i.e. a section of first-year humanities, English 200, and adult development and aging), another 2-4 courses or student groups (~24 students) will use this as a one-time civic engagement opportunity. Dr. Bopp and Ms. Story will work together to recruit faculty and students. Senior housing and services leadership in the Spartanburg community is excited about and committed to this potential partnership.
The undergraduate students involved as participants in the workshops will come from either courses that require this activity as part of a service learning component or from student organizations seeking volunteer opportunities. A professor could include this opportunity for service learning in their course as a one-time event or over the entire 10-week program.
Each workshop will begin with the leader explaining the creative activity followed by any time needed to further discuss or brainstorm the activity together as a group (10 minutes). Depending on what the Fellows design and the ideas stemming from the participating professors and their classes, the activity could be a writing/storytelling prompt (fiction, poetry, autobiographical essay, etc.) or a visual art activity, such as making a collage. For example, during an activity centered around reflection on an abstract painting, the group may pair up, linking an OA with a student. They spend time (20 minutes) independently writing or gathering their observations, thoughts and reactions to the painting. Next, the pair would discuss the similarities and differences in their experiences with the art work with each other (15 minutes). Finally, each pair would share with the group this intergenerational comparison of thoughts and any additional reflections on the activity (15 minutes). Participants would be encouraged to continue the writing or other creative activity at home and have the option to share at the start of the next workshop.
As described in section 5) in this proposal, Dr. Bopp has previously organized similar workshops that involved a writing/storytelling prompt. This was effective, and she sees the opportunity for expanding the workshop format to include other forms of creative expression that may be more accessible to some OA participants. She and Ms. Story also see compelling opportunities in working with a low-income older adult population to engage in creative projects around specific topics. For example, in a first-year humanities course that examines critical social issues, the course professor and project Fellow could collaborate to develop an activity that explored housing or food insecurity in the local area.
At the end of a 10-week session of workshops the Fellow would create a deliverable for the group and community. For example, the leader could compile a collection of the writing/storytelling and other creative pieces into a book or video that can be shared with the participants. The Fellows will also develop a display of the creative works at the local cultural center or another venue.
The team of student Fellows would be expected to not only develop the program but to meet as a group to discuss best practices, reflect upon the experience, and synthesize qualitative feedback to constantly improve the program. This work will inform their development of a web-based “how-to” manual accessible to other independent college campuses or civic groups who may want to implement the program in their own communities. Through close collaboration with community partners at senior living and senior programming centers in Spartanburg, this “how-to” knowledge will be transferred through the planning and execution of the workshops themselves. By raising campus and community awareness and interest, developing and disseminating information about an open-access project manual, and equipping local practitioners like senior center activity directors with project skills, Wofford will help build sustainability for the program after the year of funding is complete.
The project aligns closely with Wofford’s Strategic Vision https://www.wofford.edu/strategicvision/ through its goals for strengthened civic engagement, learning outcomes, and ultimately student success. It also coincides with the opening of the College’s much-anticipated first arts center, the Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts, and dovetails with the continued expansion of the Center for Community-Based Learning established in 2015, and several other major institutional initiatives working with vulnerable neighborhoods and populations in Spartanburg community. The institutional commitment paired with the strong community partnerships and buy-in already in place ensure this proposed project’s feasibility and potential for significant impact.
2. What are the project’s goals? Outcomes? Be specific about the numbers of students and older adults.
Project goals include:
– Provide a platform for intergenerational conversations through creativity workshops, reaching approximately 200 low-income older adults and approximately100 undergraduate college students in the first year of the program
– Offer low-income older adults, whom may feel isolated, a weekly, hour-long opportunity to engage with peers and with college students in a safe, positive environment
– Create a high-quality leadership experience for a group of 10 students serving as the project’s Intergenerational Fellows
– Extend civic engagement opportunities at Wofford for approximately 100 student workshop participants
Desired project outcomes include:
– Reduce negative effects of social isolation, as well as additional stressors attached to aging and low-income status, on participating OA
– Prepare student Intergenerational Fellows to lead thoughtfully and competently in their post-collegiate professional and civic lives
– Strengthen skill set and broaden mindset among the Fellows and ~100 student workshop participants
– Increase college satisfaction and thriving among Fellows and student participants, leading to persistence and success
– Increase civic-mindedness among all student participants
– Raise community awareness of the needs and contributions of the older adult population
Further context and description of outcomes for participant groups:
Outcomes for the Intergenerational Fellows (Student workshop leaders)
Outcomes for the Fellows would include skill building in areas such as: planning, organization, problem solving, decision making, working with a diverse population, communication, working with a group, and leadership. Other outcomes would include learning how to assess constructs such as “wellness’, understanding civic issues, building empathy, and a life-long understanding of the value of civic engagement.
To place some of these outcomes in context, while the overall structure of the project is quite simple – a group of people gather to create and share – it will be quite a challenge for the Fellows to navigate the diverse set of perspectives, needs, and interests of workshop participants. Therefore it will require these students to build their problem solving, communication, and decision making, skills. One of the expected difficulties facing them will be the lack of self-efficacy that may exist for the OA group. First-time OA workshop participants may comment that they are not able to produce any creative works because they “didn’t do well in school”, “always hated writing”, “not a creative type”, other negative self-portrayal statements, or just a lack of interest or engagement. The conversations that take place after these comments require the Fellows to practice excellent problem solving, decision making, and communication skills.
The most obvious, but also most critical, outcome we expect the Fellows will have is surrounding empathy and civic action; that is understanding the deep needs of this invisible group in our community and the desire to bring awareness, leading to improvement of the lives of low-income older adults. The “graying of America” requires all of us, but especially this younger generation, to understand their needs and find ways to support “successful aging”. Finally, this overall experience is an example of what the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) would call a “high impact” practice that has been found to be beneficial to student engagement and successful learning for students (https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips). Six of the ten of AAC&U’s high impact practices are evident in this project for the student Fellows: common intellectual experience, collaborative projects, undergraduate research, diversity learning, service/community-based learning, and internships. Student Fellows will be exposed to real-world problems and work to analyze them, as well as make an impact on the community.
Outcomes for Older Adult (OA) Participants and Spartanburg Community:
The desired outcomes for OA participants are primarily to reduce social isolation and its negative effects through intergenerational cognitive and social interaction, as well as to ease the additional stressors of isolation derived from their economic status. These desired outcomes for the OA participants help the Spartanburg community meet its strategic priorities for older adult community members, as defined in the Community Indicators Project (http://strategicspartanburg.org/)
According to US Census data from 2015 there are approximately 65,000 adults that are 60 years of age or older in Spartanburg County (approximately 21% of the total population). Of that 60 and over group, 10% are considered living below the poverty level (income of $11.8k for an individual). Given the baby boomers and attraction of the Upstate of South Carolina as a place to retire (SC is 3rd most common state people have moved to in the past year) the percentage of older adults is expected to significantly increase over the next ten years.
The Spartanburg Council on Aging, comprised of a group of key senior service providers, provides programming and recreation needs for low-income OA, who qualify and have applied to receive services. Currently there are 150 older adults in their program that attend programming and lunch at 6 community centers. However, there is a need to continue to identify ways to best serve this population, as census data suggests there are many other qualifying OA who are not being reached. The programming support we outline in this proposal has been enthusiastically met by key stakeholders with the Council on Aging. Ms. Bates McKinney, the recreation manager for the Spartanburg County’s Parks and Recreation’s 50+ Wellness program (which manages programming at the centers we identify serving through this project ), has indicated that the opportunity to partner with Wofford College and our students would be most welcomed. Support for our proposal has also been received from the SC Lt. Governor’s Office on Aging (Ms. Katherine Shavo) as we would be able to supply examples and stories of successful outcomes that could be scaled within the state.
Spartanburg County also has approximately 18 independent, assisted, skilled nursing, memory or continuing care facilities. Most accept Medicaid, but there are four locations that will be targeted for the current project where the majority of the residents are on Medicaid and are in the most need for programming. The proposed program could expand and improve upon the programming that currently exists at these locations. One of those locations, White Oak Manor nursing home, is 0.5 miles from the Wofford Campus and is a Medicaid facility with 192 beds. There is no current service learning opportunities that take place with Wofford college students at this location. However, given its close proximity to campus and needs of the residents, there is an excellent opportunity for partnership.
Research has found that OA that engage in intergenerational conversations have greater life satisfaction as it allows for feelings of worth when they pass on life lessons to others. McAdams (1985) and Whitbourne’s (1986) “Life story” theories (see Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2015) and Webster’s (1993) work on “reminiscence” has found that measures of life satisfaction, including social isolation and emotional well-being, change when OA reflect upon their life and are able to share their wisdom with others. Overwhelming evidence suggests that a creative engagement workshop, such as the one proposed, would produce positive social, emotional and cognitive outcomes for the OA involved.
Outcomes for Students Participating in Workshops:
The desired outcomes for student participants include developing skills for critical thinking, verbal communication, and empathy, again, outcomes that align with Wofford’s Strategic Vision for students in the area of civic learning, as well as AAC&U’s high impact practices.
It will be important that student workshop participants understand that the outcomes of this program are not unidirectional towards OA. Students should not focus on what they are giving to the OA, but instead recognize what they will potentially gain from these interactions. The emphasis will be on the joint benefits of this programming, as the learning outcomes will be shared by both generations. It is expected that the stories the students will hear and work from activities by the low-income OA will leave a lasting impression that will forever change the way they think about invisible groups, such as this one, in our society and the need to help others.
Service learning or community-based engagement provides substantial learning opportunities, especially when paired with course content. Witnessing real-world issues through personal stories and accounts provides the opportunity to think about problems and apply their knowledge in new ways. For both student Fellows and student participants, we envision that their experiences with this project will be enjoyable and rewarding, both increasing their satisfaction with college and leading to good citizenship for life.
3. Which area(s) of need will be addressed – housing, hunger, income, or isolation?
The project addresses the social isolation of low-income older adults, more broadly defined in as social, emotional and cognitive well-being. As previously described, creative activities could also indirectly address some of the other areas of need (through discussions and writing about housing, hunger, income, etc.) and thereby deepen the positive impacts of the project on the participating older adults and students. For example, workshop writing prompts could ask individuals for autobiographical stories of housing, hunger and income issues that would lead to a collection of qualitative information that would useful for the community to understand their diverse situations, needs and requests for the future.
Social isolation in older adults can be due to physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and financial reasons, and, unfortunately, it has a relationship with several poor outcomes. Activities Directors, who are responsible for OA programming, seek to diminish isolation by creating opportunities for individuals to engage with others. It is hoped that the current project would provide a preventative measure against isolation by providing an interesting opportunity to engage with a younger generation. In the case of individuals who are already isolated, it is hoped that organizations or others that are in contact with them would make them aware of our new program in order to reduce this issue. As previously noted, the census suggests that there are many other OA who are not participating in the community center programming. The proposed program would be advertised and made known to individuals through the agencies that interact with this population.
There is much discussion and debate over the term “successful aging”. Some argue that the terminology suggests that there is “unsuccessful aging” due to physical, cognitive or other reasons. Recent researchers have asked whether it is possible to have successful aging if you have dementia, osteoarthritis, or significant hearing loss (for example see Martin and colleagues’ (2015) article in the special edition of the journal “The Gerontologist” on successful aging). It would be expected that low-income older adults that are isolated are more likely to have lower self-described happiness and well-being, yet it is possible through substantial support to improve their viewpoint, hopefully leading to a belief of “successful aging” even in the face of economic and other age-related difficulties. The conversation regarding the need to address the issue of isolation is lengthy, so for brevity, suffice to say that this is a critical component to our aging population, and it is hoped that more individuals, and grant funding agencies, will recognize that social-emotional needs are as important as physical needs.
Writing has been used as a form of therapy for a number of populations that are experiencing social and/or emotional stress. “Life story writing” (see Ray’s Beyond Nostalgia”, 2000), a form of autobiographical essays that make meaning of one’s life over the lifespan, has, in particular, been found to be an effective means of increasing well-being in older adults. Reminiscing and evaluation of one’s story allows life lessons to be passed on to others. Doing so is beneficial to reduce social isolation and emotional stress in OA, but also beneficial to others, especially younger adults, so that they may learn from those stories. Further any form of creative activity provides a lasting contribution to society for individuals wanting to leave their legacy.
4. Is this a new or existing project?
This is a significant extension and enhancement of a project that began at Wofford College in 2008 and operated through 2012 that was called “Living Words”. The original program was designed for individuals with dementia and their caregivers and then was expanded for use with highly educated, cognitively intact OA groups. The program was led by a small number of Wofford students and organized by Dr. Kara Bopp and another instructor no longer working at the College. The program only used writing prompts, but followed the same workshop structure as described in this proposal.
5. If this is an existing project, please describe the project’s history, including when the project started, who has been responsible for the project, sources of funding for the project, and the extent of student, faculty and staff involvement in the project. How will this award strengthen or extend the project? Be specific about the numbers of students and older adults who are involved.
The Living Words project was co-created in 2008 by Psychology professor Dr. Kara Bopp and implemented through 2012 with the initial support of a short-term, individual donor-funded, co-curricular initiative of the College that provided 3 students with stipends over two summers to develop and implement the project. Through Dr. Bopp’s courses, including Adult Development and Aging, 4 additional students were engaged in leading writing workshops with Spartanburg County older adults at various senior care facilities. A group of 5 psychology majors implemented and assessed the program as their research project for a required Senior Thesis in psychology in 2011. Therefore, over the 5 years, there were 12 students involved in the project as workshop leaders and project assessors, and it was implemented in 15 locations in South Carolina (all but 2 in Spartanburg County) involving a total of approximately 150 OA participants. The Living Words program in 2008-12 only used creative writing prompts and workshop participants only included OA. A website was started but never completed; you find information about the program at www.livingwordsprogram.com.
There was overwhelmingly positive feedback from OA participants, students and community directors/executives. The Senior Thesis research project measured quantitative and qualitative outcomes. This included measures of cognition (memory and attention), social engagement, emotional well-being, and general life satisfaction. The program was conducted with a cognitively diverse population of older adults, but it did not previously target an economically diverse population. Student interest for the project remained, but maintaining its logistical framework become difficult over time because the College had not yet developed a hub for community engagement projects that could provide guidance and support to project faculty and students. Also, because a limited number of students had been engaged, it was difficult to build a more campus-wide identity for the project among the student body.
With the recent establishment of the Center for Community-Based Learning (CCBL) at Wofford, under the direction of Jessalyn Story, essential connective tissue now exists to guide faculty and students through civic learning experiences as part of coursework. The Center’s work is informed by theories of social change establishing civic learning in the context of partnership and reciprocity, and motivated by the civic mission advanced for colleges and universities by “A Crucible Moment” (The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement). Wofford is energized by the possibilities presented by Living Words, committed to its success, and positioned to offer the considerable support and guidance of the CCBL as a demonstration of its partnership with CIC and the AARP Foundation.
Dr. Bopp and Ms. Story envision that an Intergenerational Connections grant would expand the project’s participation and format and enhance its overall impact. The program has never been implemented on the scale proposed, with more than 100 older adults participating annually as compared to that total over 5 years in the pilot program, and adding the component of approximately 100 students participating alongside the OA in workshops. Nor has it targeted the population of low-income older adults, an underserved population in Spartanburg County. The proposal also expands the scope of creative activity from exclusively writing prompts so as to attract more Wofford students and their professors, and to potentially reach more OA who may be less responsive or less-equipped to participate in those prompts. Most significantly, by involving students as participants in workshops alongside the older adults allows for intergenerational communication and shared learning.
The “start-up” investment by CIC and the AARP Foundation in the reimagining of Living Words will allow Wofford to introduce it as a civic engagement, intergenerational conversation opportunity within coursework or student group volunteer work and as part of the College’s overall programming for student engagement in the community. It will also allow the funded Intergenerational Fellows to collaborate with the CCBL and Dr. Bopp to develop a tested curriculum, embed a centralized campus structure for the project and significantly increase overall student participation, deepen healthy-aging community partnerships, and raise awareness and buy-in by the local community. All of these intentional steps built into Wofford’s proposal will help ensure the sustainability of the project and amplify the positive impacts on the student and OA participants and the entire Spartanburg community.
6. How will you manage and evaluate the project? Please provide specific benchmarks according to which the project will be evaluated.
Dr. Kara Bopp, co-creator of the original Living Words program, and Ms. Jessalyn Story, director of Center for Community Based Learning (CCBL) will work together to manage and evaluate the project. Dr. Bopp’s responsibilities will lie in the specifics of managing the student Intergenerational Fellows by helping them to plan workshops, assessments and any necessary problem solving. She will also lead monthly group meetings with the Fellows. Ms. Story will develop a process to identify students for the Fellow position, be a point of contact for community partners, as well as communicate the civic engagement opportunity (participate in workshops) to Wofford College faculty and students. She will, therefore, be of assistance to professors that would like to integrate this civic learning opportunity in their own courses, as well as any student groups that are looking for community outreach.
Dr. Bopp, Associate Professor of Psychology, has the knowledge and experience to evaluate this program from a scientific perspective. Her research has focused primarily on age-related changes in cognition, such as working memory, but her expertise in research methods and statistics, has also been used to examine social-emotional outcomes and program assessment involving older adults. The project will be evaluated across the three groups of participants: Intergenerational Fellows, older adults, and student workshop participants.
Project evaluation methods include:
– General measures will include: number of community locations running program, number of workshops per location, number of OA and student participants (overall and by location), and percentage of workshops attended in a session by OA and students
– Fellows and student participants will provide reflective essays through an ePortfolio at two time points that will be coded for skill set development, empathy for diverse populations, and change in mindset. Fellows, student participants in a full session, versus one time workshop student participants will be compared
– Fellows will meet individually and as a group with Dr. Bopp and Ms. Story for performance feedback. They will also be observed twice per semester in order to examine participation and enthusiasm of participants at the beginning versus end of a session
– OA workshop participants will be evaluated using a pre-post design. OA will complete measures of social, emotional, and cognitive well-being at start and end of session, as well as asked to provide pre-post survey of personal desired outcomes of participation; both will be benchmarked against OA not involved in workshops (control group)
General measures: Keeping track of participation will be necessary to evaluate effectiveness of the program. Success of the program will be apparent from simple numbers such the percentage of workshops OA attend in a session. An additional measure for community centers is how many individuals are enrolled in their programming (e.g. will this program attract more OA?).
Fellows:
Dr. Bopp and Ms. Story will meet with Fellows as a group and individually over the year to allow for feedback and regular reflection on their progress toward the leadership development and learning outcomes as outlined in the Goals and Outcomes portion of the proposal.
Student Fellows will be asked to write a reflective essay at the start and end of each session. The essays will provide specific goals at the start of a workshop session and examples at the end of how they are building skills for their future and the changes that are taking place to their worldview. Essays will be uploaded to “Pathbrite”, an ePortfolio system that Wofford began using in 2015 under the leadership of the College’s Center for Innovation and Learning. The program allows students to save their work online in order to provide the ability to reflect upon their entire body of work and achievements at various points over their college career. Therefore, rather than only reflect upon this experience once, students will have the opportunity to include this in their future overall reflection of their college experience, providing time to verbalize the learning that took place. Connecting the ePortfolio learning modality with civic learning began with a current Wofford project funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and so we are well-positioned to apply that work to Living Words. Reviewing this digital evidence or “artifacts” from the ePortfolios will help determine if student workshop participants are meeting the benchmark outcomes such as empathy and critical thinking. It is expected that Fellows will provide stories regarding communication with all the stakeholders (OA, college students, community organizations, Wofford professors, and other leaders). They will explain how they have navigated the complex needs of these groups and made decisions that were best for all.
There will also be an attempt to measure the “soft skills” that Fellows will need to employ in the workshop setting, such as intergenerational communication and problem solving. Dr. Bopp will evaluate Fellows’ effectiveness by observing workshops. Success will in part be determined by examining participants’ level of participation and enthusiasm at the start versus the conclusion of the session.
Workshop participants: OA
Dr. Bopp and the student Fellows will work together with Psychology thesis students to create quantitative and qualitative assessments that will be given to the older adult participants at the start and end of each 10-week workshop session. Given the potential for publication of this work, research will be approved by Wofford’s institutional review board (IRB). This will require that workshop participants who desire and agree to participate in a more detailed assessment will be asked to sign a consent form. The quantitative assessments could include social (life satisfaction index, social engagement questionnaire), emotional (geriatric depression scale, reminiscence function scale), and cognitive well-being measures (mini-mental status exam, digit span, speed of processing and verbal fluency). The thesis students will perform analysis of the assessments.
In addition to these quantitative assessments, all OA will be asked to complete a survey at start and end of each session. At the start questions will ask what individuals hope to get out of participating in workshops, as well as ask for self-rated social, emotional and cognitive well-being. At end of the session the questionnaire will address whether outcomes were achieved and a reassessment of well-being measures. Overall satisfaction and other questions regarding the workshops will be asked using a 10-point Likert scale. These pre-post responses will be benchmarked to a similar group of OA not attending the workshops but members of the same location.
Workshop participants: Students
Students, especially those in courses that use this project as a civic engagement method, will, as explained for the Fellows, upload reflective essays into Pathbrite. Essays will be coded for communication skills, empathy, diversity and civic-mindedness. Essays by students that participate over the course of an entire session versus those that participate only in one workshop will be compared. As with the Fellows, the ePortfolio system will allow students to be able to reflect upon this learning over the course of their career at Wofford.
As the CCBL at Wofford continues to evolve, Ms. Story hopes to identify and utilize measures of students’ civic engagement through surveys, such as the Civic Engagement Scale (see Doolittle & Faul, 2013). A measure such as this would be used at the start and end of the school year. It would be necessary to code surveys for type of civic engagement participation so that benchmarking would be plausible.
Finally, the Fellows will play an important role as project evaluators of project’s effectiveness for workshop participants. Since they will be “on-the-ground” seeing and hearing interactions, it will be necessary for them to continually document qualitative information. Much of the assessment that they will be asked to complete will require them to learn how to “quantify the qualitative”. In other words, many outcomes for the participants of programming are expected to have an effect on constructs such as “happiness”, “well-being”, “social isolation”, which need to be explicitly operationally defined, but doing so requires careful thinking, observation, knowledge of previous research and effort. Fellows will produce definitions that verbalize behaviors that they will be able to observe and compare at the start and end of workshops
7. How will your institution benefit from participation in the project?
Wofford College views projects like Living Words as integral to a broad and socially-responsible liberal arts education and the institution will benefit from the project’s implementation in numerous ways. The project will strengthen Wofford’s ties with local agencies and individuals working in the area of aging and increase its contributions to the Spartanburg community. By providing a new civic learning opportunity for students, it will enhance academic and co-curricular programming and help increase the overall academic quality of a Wofford education. Guided by the College’s Strategic Vision and leveraging strengths within the Center for Community-Based Learning and Center for Innovation and Learning, Living Words will help to establish Wofford’s model for civic learning and its evaluation. For individual students, the opportunity to participate in Living Words provides a new point of connection in their education, which should lead to greater satisfaction in their college experience and ultimately persistence. Wofford is sincerely grateful to CIC and the AARP Foundation for considering this proposal, which will bring the College closer to meeting its goals for student learning and civic engagement.
GRANT renewal application for 2018-19 academic year
February 1, 2018
Intergenerational Connections Selection Committee:
I am pleased to submit a renewal application for the CIC-AARP Foundation’s Intergenerational Connections grant for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Institution: Wofford College
Project title: Living Words: Intergenerational conversations through creative engagement workshops
- Describe proposed changes/extensions to project.
The project at Wofford College offers weekly 1-hour intergenerational creative activity workshops at community locations that serve low-income older adults. For 2017-18 we are offering 10 workshops per week at 8 locations. The original proposal projected workshops would be led by 10 student fellows with participation of 100 non-paid student participants and 200 older adults over the course of the year. Over the Fall semester the 10 student fellows have led 83 workshops and already impacted 132 students and 211 older adults. By keeping track of new and repeat participants, we have been able to estimate that there are currently 66 older adults that are regularly attending workshops. Our goal is to increase these ‘regulars’ to 100 during the Spring 2018 semester, as we believe regular attendance will provide the largest benefit to improving successful aging and reducing social isolation. It is proposed for the 2018-2019 extension to the grant that the project intensify efforts by focusing on fewer locations (reduce from 8 to 4), and seek to increase participation levels of both age groups as well as deepen the impact of that participation. The locations chosen are closest to campus (<2 miles) and have the largest populations of seniors, yet currently we have the smallest percent participation rate by seniors at these locations– suggesting a significant opportunity for increased impact. Given that these locations are closest to campus, we have found that they consistently have the highest student participation. It was initially thought that offering more workshops would provide a greater number of day/time options, but we have found that certain time slots are simply more feasible and desirable for all participants. Faculty members that include a service learning component in their course are also more likely to use these larger locations as they can bring the entire class together at one time. Therefore, in the renewal our primary goal is to increase success of the program by focusing on fewer locations in order to increase total participation, but especially repeated participation of older and younger adults in workshops. Developing true relationships between the two age cohorts has the biggest impact.
The 2017-18 proposal was ambitious, requiring a large time commitment for initial communication with community partners and developing structure for the project itself. For the 2018-19 extension, we would like to designate one of the funded student Fellow roles as a leadership/coordinator role in the project. Since August 2017, Dr. Bopp has established relationships with local communities serving older adults, identified faculty that have coursework that is a good match for work with older adults, created multiple assessments, developed methods for communication between all parties (fellows, students, faculty and community partners), as well as website development for outward communication. For example, a GoogleDoc was created used for students to sign-up to attend workshops, and a Qualtrics Survey was created that allows the student fellow workshop leader to complete a short series of questions tracking participation numbers, activities, and perceived level of enjoyment. Now that these structures have been established, it makes sense that a student can maintain and build upon them and serve as a point of organization among their peer fellows, community partners, Wofford’s Center for Community-Based Learning (CCBL), and student participants. It would be a desirable position for a student as well, an opportunity to develop valuable leadership, management and civic skills. This coordinator fellow would likely rotate visits to each workshop location to provide feedback to fellows leading workshops, ultimately improving workshop quality.
A constraint of the current project is that the Student Fellows are not a part of a particular academic course, and so do not have a set time to meet with program leaders (Dr. Bopp and Ms. Story, Director of the CCBL). In order to increase communication and reflection, the 2018-19 renewal would include student Fellows taking a non-credit bearing “community engagement” course. The students would be expected to have a weekly 1-hour meeting to share stories, conduct reflections and communicate best-practices with each other. This time would also be spent creating a “guidebook” so that future students can continue to lead workshops.
- How will the a) institution, b) students, c) older adults benefit?
The institution benefits by being able to offer an opportunity for the high-impact practice of community-based learning, which leads to improved student satisfaction and retention.
Student participants benefit from improved civic-mindedness, empathy, and understanding of age-related process. Student fellows derive the additional benefits of development and refinement of skills related to organization, communication, and problem-solving.
Older adults benefit from the added social engagement opportunity leading to reduction in isolation, depression and loneliness. Interacting with younger adults also reduces their negative schemas of the younger generation. Communication of their life story improves positive reflection and reminiscence that promotes successful aging.
- How will the project be sustained after funding?
An additional year of funding will enable Wofford to make further progress in institutionalizing and sustaining some form of the Intergenerational Connections project, including deepening its connections with two burgeoning programs of the Center for Community-Based Learning: 1) the Community-Engaged Faculty Fellows program (whose participants utilized Intergenerational Connections in their classroom and whose students participated in the workshops) and 2) the Civic Engagement Scholars program, which will be built in 2018-19, bringing together students who lead in the area of civic engagement for community-building, reflection and support. The CCBL’s role continues as liaison between the Wofford community and organizational partners in the larger Spartanburg community – such as those overseeing the workshop locations – as well the coordinator of faculty and student engagement with those partners. Dr. Bopp will remain active in the program by engaging senior thesis students in the assessment of the program, engaging students from her “Adult Development and Aging” as workshop participants, and continuing general oversight of the program. Finally, the work of the student fellows over two years to develop best practices will reduce the logistical barriers to sustainability.
- Budget
Seven Student Fellows would each receive $1,500 for the academic year (10 weeks during fall and 10 weeks during spring semester), for a total of $10,500. It accounts for 75 hours of work in each semester, averaging approximately 5 hours of work per week. This stipend amount reflects an increase from last year, given that the level of effort and sophistication of the fellows’ tasks was observed to merit a higher student worker pay rate. In addition, the goal of deepening project efforts at specific workshop locations will require students to utilize more complex skill sets. Two student fellows would be partnering at each of the two largest workshop locations and two others students would be assigned to smaller locations. The seventh student would be assigned to the new leadership/coordinator role.
In addition, Wofford is requesting $1,500 in program support. This includes $350 for workshop materials such as pens, paper, binders, and name tags; $350 for food/snack costs that have been necessary to run workshops during the lunch hour or as incentive for attendance; $350 to create a public display of artifacts from workshops (writing and art work by older and students) – framing supplies, etc.; $450 in funds available for student group travel (such as for a class participating in the project) to the workshop sites. This accommodates up to five trips with a per trip cost of $65 for van rental and $25 for fuel.
Total request: $12,000: $10,500 for student stipends, $1,500 for program support
If I can answer additional questions, please contact me.
With kind regards,
Dr. Kara L. Bopp, Ph.D.