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Gerontology and geriatrics are quintessentially interdisciplinary fields. To understand aging, an interdisciplinary perspective is necessary; to provide quality care to older adults with complex, chronic conditions, an interprofessional team is required. Academic, clinical, and community-based settings - with their vertical organizational structures - need bridging strategies to create networks that support interdisciplinary education in both classroom and experiential settings. Taking on these challenges requires emphasizing the importance of key competencies that integrate the unique perspectives, contributions, and roles of different disciplines, and creating the connections critical for promoting interdisciplinary education. First, this paper develops a theoretical foundation for networking to construct and maintain educational and service provider partnerships. Second, the organizational and institutional requirements for successful networking are explored, based on both empirical research and principles from the theoretical framework. Finally, practical recommendations for the development of key strategies for implementing and sustaining interdisciplinary and academic-clinical-community partnerships are summarized.

Intergenerational study abroad programs can provide opportunities for academic institutions to become more age-friendly. With a robust market of both older adult educational tourists and university study abroad students, there is an opportunity to integrate the age-segregated travel groups by collaborating to provide intergenerational study abroad. By diversifying the ages of study abroad participants, group experiences may lead to transformative learning related to self-awareness. This multi-disciplinary review examines literature from the gerontology, tourism, and education disciplines to determine specific approaches for achieving shared educational outcomes through intergenerational study abroad. This exploratory paper outlines a theoretical framework for college and university-sponsored intergenerational study abroad, identifies overlapping areas of student study abroad and older adult educational tourism, and provides recommendations for creating an intergenerational learning opportunity that extends beyond the academic campus and exemplifies the Age-Friendly University (AFU) initiative. Finally, a discussion of implications for gerontology education and potential challenges of implementation is provided.

This paper presents a complex, but realistic, picture of the lived experience in assisted living (AL), and provokes thoughtful reflection about the operational and ethical challenges faced in the delivery of care to an increasingly frail population in a typical AL facility. Developed from the findings of a two-year qualitative research project, the case represents a composite of selected data collected at five AL facilities that participated in the study. Students will participate in individual and small group exercises that challenge them to identify everyday ethical concerns in AL, and to suggest ways that management can address these issues. The case is suitable for cross-disciplinary use, and can be effectively applied in the fields of management, health care administration, sociology, gerontology, social work, and nursing, either on the graduate or undergraduate level. It is especially well suited to courses that incorporate the topics of long-term care, senior housing, or ethics.

The author discusses the need to develop a pedagogy of aging and old age (geragogics). He outlines its history, its main ideas, and its place in the system of gerontological and pedagogical disciplines. The paper also presents the development of the aging process of populations in the United States and Poland, and defines three kinds of tasks facing geragogics (i.e., tasks in the field of basic and applied research as well as in the field of education of old people and popularization of geragogical problems). In conclusion, the author states that the development of the pedagogy of aging and old age (geragogics) in many countries of the world is not only a challenge but also a necessity for the time to come.

Several models for gerontology programs in higher education have been outlined in the literature but there is little data available on the internal processes leading to a specific model's adaption. This paper traces the debates and dilemmas leading to the innovative formation of a multidisciplinary model under one academic dean at a large state university. The formal links that this model involves have contributed to the growth and expansion of the gerontology program.

This paper will discuss some of the major topics which are essential to a core course in Social Gerontology and some suggestions for how best to help students understand these topics. It is assumed that Social Gerontology is an essential part of the "backbone of gerontology."