Elderly Encouraged to Be Part-Time Teachers--and Students : At Florida School, Retirement Is an Education

Florida, one of the country’s most popular retirement havens, has for decades wooed the elderly with sunny days, a slower pace and challenging golf links.

But, today, retirees are being lured by an alternative life style that gives new meaning to retirement.

It’s school.

A good example is the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College, an innovative living-learning community tucked in the corner of a small private liberal arts college.

The academy is a gathering place for retired men and women who find it hard to mark time after a demanding career--achievers not dissuaded by aches and pains that betray their years.

Mentors to Undergraduates

They are assuming roles as part-time teachers, part-time students, lecturers and advisers. They are hosts for public forums and serve as adjunct faculty members, team teachers, career counselors, role models and mentors to undergraduates the age of their grandchildren.

And they are hitting the books again to keep in step.

Among the 115 academy members are a retired major general who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp and later was a strategist for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a former anesthesiologist who spent 2 1/2 years with the French underground; an ex-ambassador to the Soviet Union; a retired surgeon; a six-term congressman; an academician who served as overseas director for a university, a Rhodes scholar and a woman Presbyterian minister who at age 60 was arrested during a civil rights march in the South.

Others come from law, business, arts, humanities, science, government, economics, mental health and engineering.

From India to Sudan

They range in age from 48 to 93 and have lived and worked all over the world: the rice paddies of Asia; the classrooms of India, Lebanon and Nigeria; embassies in Iron Curtain satellites; medical facilities of Cambodia and Iran; the education ministries of Sudan and Pakistan, and the exhibition halls of Europe and Tokyo.

“I’m 77 years old and most of the time I feel like I did when I was 25,” said retired surgeon Francis L. Browning, a grandfather of 13 who admitted: “Of course, there are certain times I feel like I’m 90.”

Charles Smith, nearly 70, a retired economics teacher and investment banking consultant from Philadelphia, joined the academy in search of “a full and meaningful life, an association with people interested in keeping the mind alive. Golf? I could care less. Chasing a little ball around is someone else’s game.”

Mason Daly, a recently retired educator, was eager for carefree days but somewhat apprehensive. “I was moving into a community where I knew nobody.”

New Circle of Friends

He met a mix of people, developed a circle of friends and says that “it’s a delight . . . to walk across campus and have young people wave or walk into a cafeteria with them and sit down at ease.”

Retirees pair with faculty members to teach a freshman course on Western heritage, which traces man from ancient times through the 20th Century. They do the same for a required senior course in Judeo-Christian perspectives, which sorts the ethical values of society.

Despite a slow start and a leery faculty, the program ballooned from three senior participants to 30 in four years.

To cover a broad range of views, the elders deliberately are coupled with professors from an opposite bent: a pacifist with a general; a scientist with a language and literature specialist.

New Perspectives

Students say the format gives them new perspectives.

“We were talking about a moment in the past, and here we had a lecturer who lived through that moment,” said Tachaka Ray, 20, of Santa Monica, Calif.

The academy was founded in October, 1982, by Peter Armacost, president of Eckerd. The conservative church-related school, formerly Florida Presbyterian College, sits on 281 acres. It has an enrollment of 1,200 students from 40 states and 45 countries who pay an average of $8,220 annually and $3,000 more for room and board.

Armacost housed the academy at Lewis House, a waterfront building that once was the president’s quarters and has an atrium big enough to seat 100.

His goal for the Academy of Senior Professionals was twofold: to provide a stimulating environment for retirees and to enrich the learning experience of undergraduates.

Campus Housing for Elderly

He envisioned a total living-learning community with campus housing for retirees on 78 acres overlooking Boca Ciega Bay. His blueprint for College Harbor, a progressive-care retirement center, included 290 apartments and 60 skilled nursing beds. He also planned 480 condominiums.

However, the academy’s early growth did not match the lofty predictions. Today, the health care center is partly opened but not restricted to academy members. The condos have not been built yet.

Five years ago, Armacost tapped Leo Nussbaum, retired president of Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to get the academy off the ground.

Organizers formed think tanks and made plans quietly, not wanting to unleash the ire of a guarded faculty that felt threatened.

Nussbaum picked timely topics--biomedical ethics, the environment, the bicentennial of the Constitution. Public events began to draw audiences.

Retirees found themselves back at the books. Joe Pezdirtz, a 66-year-old retired Army major general, took part in the series of bicentennial programs. His topic was the powers of the presidency. “I spent seven months preparing for a 45-minute lecture,” he said.

Nussbaum set up a series of meetings for a person--say, from a financial background--to brief peers on how to read and interpret bonds, the advantages of stocks, how to research a company. The sessions caught on, pulling audiences from 8 to 35, depending on the subject.

Bridging Generation Gap

Finally, Nussbaum turned his efforts toward bridging the generation gap to find ways retirees could share their experiences in the classroom.

“One big problem was (that) some of the faculty looked at academy members as an enemy or invader,” he said. “They didn’t see the enrichment and interaction it could provide.”

Nussbaum asked three faculty members to try a modest experiment using a retired professional to assist in teaching Western heritage, a freshman requirement taught by all the faculty members.

The teachers were impressed and propagated the concept through word-of-mouth. Colleagues listened. And, gradually, they began lining up for academy members to become part of their discussion groups.

Academy members may skip the classroom to concentrate on writing projects, research or study. Or they may want the socializing, which includes dinners or parties with colleagues, faculty and students. Participation can be year-round or seasonal. There are no obligations to take part in specific activities.

“That’s what makes it work,” said Frank Palmer, academy organizing committee chairman and a psychologist who served as provost at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “It’s a group of individuals whose needs vary enormously. Some might be interested in the undergraduate experiment; others the social end. The academy attempts to satisfy those needs.”

$1,000 Initiation Fee

An academy member pays a $1,000 initiation fee and $600 in annual dues. Fees go toward the academy’s annual operating budget of $150,000. The college supplies the rest.

“Dr. Armacost is a smart man,” Palmer quipped. “He probably saw somewhere down the road some of these old codgers would have money and leave it to the college.”

Browning, a former director of a Wellfleet, Mass., medical center, has been with the Academy of Senior Professionals since the beginning. He thought about retirement but didn’t know what he would do. “It’s hard to find anyone to play tennis. I’m too good for people my own age, and the young are too fast for me,” he said.

He found his niche in the undergraduate program. It differed immensely from his scientific background. “I’m still getting an education and making lasting friendships,” he said.

When he first started working with freshmen, Browning was astounded by their grammar, punctuation and spelling. “It was awful.” Under an agreement with the teacher, he read and commented on student papers. “It was gratifying. By the third paper, they had improved.”

Pezdirtz, a retired major general, spent 33 years in the military. He was part of the unit that helped liberate Dachau and resettle displaced persons in Austria.

“I’ve been to many of the places we talk about in class. I know the people, the cultures,” he said.

To Bait and Needle

For one course, Pezdirtz teamed with a sociology professor. “He was a pacifist and we were on the opposite ends of everything. This gave the students a marvelous trip through time and space. I was not a threat. I didn’t grade. I was there to bait, needle and present a whole different concept.”

Marie Dubalen, an 81-year-old retired anesthesiologist, was trapped in Paris during World War II and joined the French Underground. She worked alone, meeting couriers, passing papers, running phony identification. “I led two lives and nobody ever knew,” she said.

When an agent who knew her identity was picked up, she had to stay on the move to avoid arrest. She was never caught and made it out on the last train to Geneva before the border was closed.

Her dream of retirement was to keep learning. “That’s been my main objective in life.”