Syracuse University’s Gerontology Center celebrates 35 years with public conference on aging, disability

Syracuse University’s Gerontology Center celebrates 35 years with public conference on aging, disability April 23, 2007Sara Millersemortim@syr.edu

The Gerontology Center at Syracuse University will mark its 35-year anniversary by hosting a public conference May 3-5 at which experts will offer current insight into the ongoing national and global issues of aging and disability.

The three-day conference in the Public Events Room, Room 220 of Eggers Hall, is free to the public, but an R.S.V.P. is required. The conference will include special presentations on aging, disability and health; living and caring arrangements; policy trends, aging, disability and military service; civil rights trends/political activism; work, aging and disability; and aging and HIV.

On Thursday, May 3, from 3:30-6 p.m., Judith E. Heumann, lead consultant for Global Partnership for Disability and Development at the World Bank, will deliver a keynote address, “Opportunities and Challenges Facing Older Disabled People.” Heumann is a lifelong activist for the rights of people with disabilities. She co-founded Disabled in Action, and served as deputy director of the Center for Independent Living in Berkley. Heumann also co-founded the World Institute on Disability, and then served as assistant secretary of education in charge of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation.

On Friday, May 4, from 4-6 p.m., Mark Priestley, doctor of disability studies at the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds, U.K., will deliver a second keynote, “Disability and Aging: Friends or Foes in Research and Politics?” Priestley’s current research interests include comparative and historical perspectives on disability and social policy in the international context. Priestley focuses on the links between changes in policies and in disabled people’s everyday lives in the context of social, political and economic inequalities that exist in societies more generally. The development of a life course approach to disability studies has been the focus of his recent research.

Both keynote addresses are also open to the public and will be followed by a reception. Other featured conference presenters include Fernando Torres-Gil, director of UCLA’s Center for Policy Research on Aging, and Marjorie Cantor, professor and Brookdale Distinguished Scholar of the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University. For a full schedule of speakers, visit http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/cpr/gerontology.

The Gerontology Center includes 30 faculty members who are engaged in aging research, education and policymaking. The center hosts scholarly conferences, oversees an undergraduate and graduate certificate in gerontology, and works to coordinate and foster interdisciplinary activities relating to gerontology across campus.

This conference is sponsored by the Gerontology Center; the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; Douglas Wolf, Gerald B. Cramer Professor of Aging Studies; SU’s College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education, College of Law and College of Human Services and Health Professions; the Burton Blatt Institute; and the sociology and psychology departments at SU.

For more details and to R.S.V.P., contact Martha Bonney at 443-2703 or mbonney@maxwell.syr.edu.