by Beth Stafford
When talking to Anne Basting about the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center on Age and Community, be prepared to be swept up in her enthusiasm.
Appointed in March, Basting is the center’s first director. Personally and professionally, she is focused on convincing others “how dynamic the field of aging is.”
The study of aging is increasingly cross-disciplinary, Basting says. “We are the pioneers in the field,” she points out. “Demographic shifts make it necessary for us to think in new ways about aging.”
To those in fields of study who may have thought that aging would never impact their work, Basting says, “It will.”
That she is working with UWM faculty and staff in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare is to be expected, but Basting also is collaborating with the Peck School of the Arts, School of Business Administration, and School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Basting likes to bring together scholars from many different disciplines, those doing hands-on work with the aging…and the elderly themselves. “Putting everybody together in one room leads to unbelievable energy and ideas.”
The Center on Age and Community was officially launched in October 2001 and is a Milwaukee Idea initiative. Part of a $5 million grant from the Helen Bader Foundation that endowed a chair in applied gerontology and scholarships also was earmarked to support the work of the center (see sidebar).
The concept for the center was developed over 18 months by a group of more than 100 people, including faculty, staff, activists and advocates for seniors.
Basting’s vision and the center’s founding mission align perfectly: “To combine university expertise with the experience of those who work in the field to create innovative new ways of improving our lives as we age.”
During the last six months, Basting and her staff have formulated a statement of the center’s objectives and a list of current and future programs.
The statement defines the center’s three areas of focus:
“Through its programs, the center fulfills its main function to serve as a central, coordinating resource for information, promotion and development of research, outreach, public policy and education on aging,” says Basting. These programs are designed to encompass southeastern Wisconsin as well as UWM.
While some are still just a gleam in the director’s eye, other programs already are up and running:
Basting came to UWM from a position in New York as a Fellow at the Brookdale Center on Aging and as project director of the TimeSlips project. A native of Janesville, Wis., Basting received her master’s degree from UW-Madison and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Even before arriving here this spring, she was well known to the UWM community. From 1995-96 she was a Rockefeller Fellow in Age Studies at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, where she expanded her dissertation into a book (“The Stages of Age,” 1998, University of Michigan Press) and began her work with people with Alzheimer’s disease.
In 1998, she returned to UWM as a National Brookdale Fellow to research the effect of creative storytelling on people with dementia and those who care for them. During this time, Basting served as an adjunct assistant professor, guiding students through independent studies with the TimeSlips Storytelling Project. In the spring of 2000, Basting produced the TimeSlips art exhibit at the Charles Allis Art Museum and a related play at UWM.
For more on the center and its programs, visit http://www.aging.uwm.edu.