Pre-Doctoral Training

NIH/NIA Pre-Doctoral Training Program in Aging and Urban Health
   
The IOG Training Program prepares students for professional careers in aging research, with particular expertise in urban health.

    More about the Training Program

    Training Program Faculty

    Weekly Colloquia 
    Pre-Doctoral Training Fellowship Application   
    
    Elizabeth A. Olson Award for Gerontology Scholarship

    Margaret Clark Award Student Paper Competition

    Summer Training Workshop on African American Aging Research

    Other gerontology opportunities at Wayne State University



About the Training Program

Purpose

The purpose of this National Institute on Aging (NIA) supported training program is to concentrate our training for pre-doctoral students (across a variety of disciplines) on the study of aging and urban health, with a focus on functional independence, health and health care over a 5-year period. Disciplines include anthropology, economics, engineering, interdisciplinary studies, occupational therapy, psychology, and sociology.  This program integrates training in both core discipline-specific content and aging content with multidisciplinary research training in health and aging. The training program prepares students for professional careers in aging research, with particular expertise in urban health. While there is an increasing need for trained gerontological researchers and teachers in general, there is a specific need for those trained in urban health issues. This need is specifically highlighted as a strategic objective in the Strategic Plan of the NIA (NIA, 2000).

Focus

Our training program has four major foci, each designed to produce outstanding gerontological researchers:

• Apprenticed research opportunities, premised on regular, frequent contact with mentors in the context of a highly structured mentoring program that emphasizes interdisciplinary research. The research experience and training of our students pursues empirical demonstration of theoretically derived hypotheses concerning an array of health and aging issues. Thus, the trainees' projects involve recruitment of older adults from the surrounding communities. The participation of students in all facets of field operations establishes the presence of our training program in the community and creates ties with community organizations, health care facilities, senior centers, and other agencies. In this way, students gain first-hand knowledge of the challenges of aging. This experience further motivates pursuit of answers to the problems facing older urban Americans, their families and their health care providers.

• Specific disciplinary education, combined with multidisciplinary research training. Our faculty mentors include psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, occupational therapists, economists, nurses, and allied health professionals. Graduate training in both a traditional core discipline and in gerontology represents our philosophy for the best training graduate students can attain. The program at Wayne State University lives by this ideal, by having students and faculty connected to disciplinary homes and to a strong multidisciplinary gerontological research institute. Our training faculty reflect this integration; half have specific appointments within the Institute of Gerontology and half are appointed in various departments across campus. As a result, students in multiple fields are able then to combine their disciplinary knowledge, with their experience of faculty mentoring and peer support across disciplines, and create a synergistic gerontological research experience. 

• Strong methodological emphasis. As part of their training, students are expected to take 12-15 credits in research and statistical methodologies particularly appropriate to the study of aging; many of these methods courses are taught by this program's training faculty. Later, a detailed outline is given of the courses available in methodology across disciplines.

• Urban health focus. In the context of their research collaboration in the Wayne State University gerontological research training, students will become experts in the recruitment and retention of urban research participants (particularly African American elders). Several institute studies, combined, currently enroll more than 1000 African American elders, and other studies focus on Native American elders. Virtually all Wayne State University gerontology studies are based in the Detroit metropolitan area, which is a rich and heterogeneous region, and is very amenable to enhancing the diversity and heterogeneity of research samples.

Required Activities

Required activities in the Training Program include:

• Attend Colloquia/Professional Development Seminars once a week
• Participate in Mentoring Team meetings (Develop goals for academic year in the fall and evaluation in the spring)
• Produce an average of one publication per year
• Serve on one IOG committee per year

Trainee Handbook