About THE PROGRAM
The Life Course Scholars Program (LCS) was created in October 2016 with pilot funding from the UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging. Housed in the Urban Studies and Planning Program, the Life Course Scholars Program creates a unique interdisciplinary, cross-generational, multi-site learning experience for UC San Diego undergraduates that aims to transform their understanding of aging, health, learning and research, as well as connect them more deeply to the people and places of surrounding San Diego communities. This two-quarter sequence in the winter and spring of every year combines place-based, experiential, and traditional classroom-based learning methods, Learning Exchange Groups (LEGs) comprised of small clusters of EPs and LC Scholars, and both participatory planning and collaborative research activities, on and off campus. The program culminates in LCS teams designing and implementing community-based Healthy Aging Projects (HAPs) under the guidance and mentorship of the course instructors, Dr. Leslie Lewis and Dr. Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell, with support from interested EPs. HAPs are typically developed and organized in the winter quarter and implemented in the spring quarter.
The hypothesis of the LCS program is that fostering meaningful intergenerational connections, new competencies in participatory research on healthy aging, and collaborative knowledge production and action planning will have multiple positive, measurable effects for both students and elders involved in the program.
For all participants, we anticipate:
1) Gains in individual knowledge and competency around healthy aging
2) Broadened perspectives about the depth, diversity, pathos and possibilities of people’s lives in their later years
3) Critical awareness of policies and structures that create disproportionate negative impacts on particular individuals and communities across the lifespan.
The hypothesis of the LCS program is that fostering meaningful intergenerational connections, new competencies in participatory research on healthy aging, and collaborative knowledge production and action planning will have multiple positive, measurable effects for both students and elders involved in the program.
For all participants, we anticipate:
1) Gains in individual knowledge and competency around healthy aging
2) Broadened perspectives about the depth, diversity, pathos and possibilities of people’s lives in their later years
3) Critical awareness of policies and structures that create disproportionate negative impacts on particular individuals and communities across the lifespan.
Who We Are
The Co-Directors of the LCS Program are two faculty members from the Urban Studies and Planning Program at UCSD, Leslie R Lewis, PhD, MPH and Mirle Bussell, PhD. Drs. Lewis and Bussell together have twenty-five years of experience teaching and mentoring students, as well as developing and supervising community-based research projects. Cumulatively, they have partnered with more than ten public and nongovernmental organizations in communities as diverse as City Heights, Southeastern San Diego, Barrio Logan, Linda Vista, Hillcrest, and San Ysidro. They have supervised over two hundred UC San Diego undergraduates in community-based practica, academic internships, and service-learning projects. Both are sensitive to the challenges of building trusting, collaborative relationships with community-based organizations and are in a position to leverage these relationships to successfully implement this project. To aid in the guidance and advising of this project, they have engaged a team of collaborating faculty and staff from across the social, physical, and biological sciences, computer sciences and engineering, humanities, human development, education studies, public and global health, and the school of medicine.
Learn about our current scholars here and our past scholars here.
Learn about our current scholars here and our past scholars here.
Our History
This program was made possible through a grant from the UC San Diego Healthy Aging Initiative.