Students return to urban neighborhoods to work with teens.
On an afternoon last fall, leaders from nonprofit organizations that serve the elderly in Tompkins County sat down with John Krout, director of the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute, Robert N. Riter, professor of health services administration at Ithaca College, Peter Chi, professor of consumer economics and housing in the College of Human Ecology, and Debra Dyason, field study coordinator for the college. Krout and Dyason left the meeting with a wish list of ways college students could become key players in helping elders remain independent, active citizens. Service Learning in Elder Care Filling the requests put forth by the human service agencies is now possible thanks to a grant from the New York State Foundation for Long-Term Care, Inc., which helps fund the Ithaca Partnership for Service Learning in Elder Care, a project jointly sponsored by the College of Human Ecology and Ithaca College and coordinated through the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center. As the college's field study coordinator, Dyason is in charge of establishing partnerships with Ithaca's nonprofit agencies and at the same time creating a structure within the college that ensures that once a particular service is offered, users can rely on its continued availability. She also serves as the liaison to Ithaca College's Gerontology Institute to ensure productive collaboration between the two institutions.