Release date: May 1, 2002
Contact: Nancy Seideman, Director, Media Relations,
at 404-727-0640 or nseidem@emory.edu

Emeritus College Seeks to Connect Retirees to Campus Life

Emory University history professor emeritus J. Harvey Young may have retired in 1984, but last month he was back in class. The purpose was a "class reunion" that brought together former students spanning 40 years for one more history lesson with a beloved professor – thanks in part to Emory’s new Emeritus College.

The reunion was one of the first major events of the Emeritus College, a two-year pilot program at the university that seeks to strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between the university and its retired faculty.

Young’s students were invited back to reflect on a term paper assignment Young had given each of his students between 1948 and 1977. Ever the conscientious historian, Young recorded the author and topic of each paper, and out of his grade books the idea was born to bring the students back for a reunion.

"Our emeriti faculty like Dr. Young have a lot to offer," says Eugene Bianchi, director of the Emeritus College who retired from Emory’s Department of Religion two years ago. "You retire from the institution, but you don’t retire from the community."

Emory is one of dozens of colleges and universities across the country that have, or are developing, such programs for their emeriti faculty, and in some cases, retired administrators and staff.

These organizations vary in tone and scope. A handful of universities, such as North Carolina State University, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), which founded the first such organization in 1968, and the University of Southern California (USC), have long-established, comprehensive programs that provide a variety of services to emeriti faculty and the surrounding community as well.

As at many universities, Emory’s emeriti faculty are no small number. The 2001 Emory Campus Directory lists 257 retired faculty and administrators, and almost a quarter (24.6 percent) of current Emory faculty members are 55 or older.

As the population ages, more schools are considering the advantages of such an organization, says Paul Hadley, former director of USC’s Emeriti Center. Hadley originally retired from USC in 1981, then returned to head the Emeriti Center in 1986. He officially retired again just last fall, but he hasn’t slowed down.

Hadley is now leading the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE), a new national group that seeks to provide a formal umbrella for the development of emeriti and other related retirement organizations.

Among the 40 member institutions so far are Emory, USC, UCLA, N.C. State, the University of California-Berkley, Rutgers, the University of Indiana, the University of Iowa, the University of Toronto in Canada, and others. AROHE will hold a national conference at the University of Indiana in Bloomington in October.

Universities find that retirees provide built-in support for the institution, providing assistance in recruitment and fundraising on the material side, and an invaluable depth of knowledge and experience to share on the academic side, Hadley says.

Business also has become attuned to the potential of emeriti faculty. Companies have partnered with universities and colleges to build retirement communities close to campus aimed at retired faculty and staff. UCLA just broke ground on such a development and N.C. State already has one in place.

"It’s enough of a business that companies find it’s a market worth developing," Hadley says.

At Emory, the effort to create its Emeritus College began in 1998. Bianchi (who also is first vice president of AROHE) and other colleagues put together a proposal looking for a way to redefine the status of emeriti professors and provide them with an official campus organization that would supply a much-desired academic and social connection to the university.

In its first year, Emory’s Emeritus College has conducted surveys of faculty to find out what they want and need, brought former professors to residence halls for an informal and popular "Meaning of Life" discussion series, held monthly breakfasts for retirees, and provided women faculty with a "Transitions in Life" seminar in coordination with the university’s women’s center.

Bianchi says the long-term goal is for Emory’s Emeritus College to become a resource and asset for both retirees and the university community.

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