New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium
NY6 Upstate-Global Collective: Faculty Fellows Working Group (2016-2017)

Project Summary:
Sponsored by the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium, from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this project focuses on access to end-of-life housing, support, and palliative and hospice care. As more individuals live into older ages, the ways in which modern society either integrates aged individuals and addresses their particular experiences and needs, or fails to, represents an important human rights issue. If, as an aging society, we do not consider the many issues and inequities that exist around integration, quality of life, and care for the aging, our social institutions and norms will be increasingly mismatched to a growing proportion of the population. By investigating the challenges presented by an aging society, faculty will be able to enrich their teaching and research toward a broader goal to understand the factors that make communities more ‘livable’ and contribute to integrated aging.

Union College faculty involved in this project include: Program Coordinator Carol Weisse, professor of psychology/director of health professions, and working group members Cay Anderson-Hanley, associate professor of psychology, and David Cotter, professor and chair of sociology. They are working in partnership with faculty from each of the other NY6 institutions: Colgate University, Hamilton College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Skidmore College, and St. Lawrence University.