Students traveled to Nicoya, Costa Rica to understand why Costa Rica has one of the longest-lived populations in the world.
USC Leonard Davis School and Rebuilding Together team up to serve Angelenos in need and teach professionals how to help older adults age safely at home.
Professors from some of this semester’s gerontology courses share how everyone can use their classroom lessons in their everyday lives.
Victor Wilson helps older adults improve their strength, flexibility and balance. With a Master of Arts in Gerontology, he’ll take his mission of healthy aging through fitness to a new level.
Baby boomers expect amenities in their senior care environments. USC Master of Arts in Senior Living Hospitality student and senior living executive Mariele Soriano is embracing this reality.
To help students stay active and relieve stress, Associate Professor John Walsh brings the exercise routine he led during online lectures to campus.
At age 64, John “Old Doc” Walsh of the USC Leonard Davis School recognizes the need to stay limber — especially in the middle of a two-hour online class.
Bérénice Benayoun, assistant professor of gerontology and biological sciences, says biologists should not be afraid of big data.
It didn’t take long for Athan Bezaitis to catch the gerontology bug. He worked as communications director for the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology before he ever took a class. But after getting to know the school’s faculty and students and learning about their impactful work, Bezaitis decided to dive into the field himself in 2010.
He now works as senior director of communications and public relations at The Permanente Federation, where he communicates on behalf of 23,000 physicians caring for more than 13 million members of Kaiser Permanente. His USC certificate in gerontology, coupled with his professional experience, is the reason he got there, he says. The certificate program gave him a greater understanding of gerontology policy and research at a time when the aging of the U.S. population has wide-ranging implications.
“It’s a degree that’s going to help provide you the insight that you’ll need to be a decision-maker around the future of aging,” he says. “I can’t think of a better foundation.”
Bezaitis says his decision represented the logical next step in a career spent primarily with organizations focused on health care and healthy aging. USC was the perfect choice, not only because he worked there but also because it offered an online graduate certificate in gerontology with highly experienced instructors and an unparalleled range of courses.
Online convenience
The program also provided Bezaitis with the flexibility he needed given his full-time job. He took one course each semester and was able to engage with each class based on his personal schedule. He could participate in a class in real-time or watch a recording later.
“The experience was both convenient and enriching,” he says.
His favorite course was a gerontology policy class with Instructional Associate Professor George Shannon, Ph.D., who directs the Rongxiang Xu Regenerative Life Science Research Lab at USC.
“I felt like I could have had a degree in public policy because of the amount of information I learned in that course,” Bezaitis says. “What I learned about aging public policy is the most relevant part of the work I do today.”
A practical education
Bezaitis applied what he learned at USC to his previous work as communications manager at The SCAN Foundation, an independent nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing quality care for seniors. As the organization’s communications manager, he was able to contribute to discussions that helped shape the Affordable Care Act’s long-term care provision.
“We got to be right on the cusp of what was happening during the ACA’s implementation,” he says.
A marketable asset
Many of his team members at The SCAN Foundation were USC graduates who had connected him to the job. The school’s professional network is real, Bezaitis says, and it’s strong.
“The aging network at USC is something that [someone can] really take advantage of when they’re at the school—and after,” he says.
Bezaitis says that the USC program also helped him stand out when interviewing with Kaiser Permanente, and it will only become more valuable amid a growing need for experts in the field.
Earning a gerontology certificate or degree is one of the best ways to advance a career in an exciting field; it’s also an important way to help older adults and make a difference, he says.
“I never would have predicted where I am today,” Bezaitis says. “[But] gerontology is one of the most important discoveries of my life.”
To learn more about the graduate certificate in gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, call us at (213) 740-5156.
Associate Professor John Walsh shares the tips he’s learned over the years that can help even novice instructors improve their teaching both online and off.