Other courses may be approved at the time of registration. It is normally the responsibility of the student to arrange this activity and to have it approved by the director of gerontology. However, students may check with the director as to available opportunities to complete this requirement. The Major in Gerontology Gerontology majors are expected to complete 36 credit hours. Beyond those 36 credit hours of gerontology courses, they are also required to take 3 credit hours in research methods.
Gerontology is a multidisciplinary field that studies the process of aging across the lifespan.
Gerontologists draw on research from a variety of fields that include anthropology, economics, philosophy, physiology, psychology, and sociology, among others. The courses listed below are concerned with issues that concern older persons themselves and range from an examination of health-care needs to the understanding of wisdom. Some courses look at the impact of the way we choose to organize society and define aging socially, and how individuals actually experience and understand their own later years. Gerontology uses a variety of theoretical perspectives that shed light on the social, psychological, emotional, and spiritual nature of being human, and uses these as a background for the investigation of a wide variety of topics. This introductory course is multidisciplinary in nature and considers selected basic information about aging and older persons that derives from biology, psychology, sociology, demography, and the humanities.