With a growing aging population, services aimed at older people are destined to grow, Ferraro said. He cites anticipated increases in the need for speech language pathologists and audiologists, biomedical scientists, genetic engineers, geriatric medicine practitioners, physical and occupational therapists and financial planners. The funds were used to further the program's growth, to train and develop faculty and to expand interdisciplinary research. We are quite pleased with our success to date. Nineteen faculty members have received new grants for gerontology research in the past two years.
Additional applications are pending.
The Hanleys said the contribution was intended to set an example for others to give back to the university as well as bolster the gerontology program. Mrs. Hanley is a 1961 Purdue home economics and child development graduate and William Hanley earned an industrial management degree from Purdue in 1960. To qualify for the gerontology program students must take courses in three different areas to help them see the aging process in a more comprehensive context, he said. This is a wonderful time for gerontology, a golden era for research on aging. Health, fitness and strength training are portions of the gerontology program's wide-ranging efforts to enhance quality of life and independence in later years.