A recent article in Columbia Magazine, titled "The Smart Person's Guide to Aging," highlights an innovative partnership between the School of Professional Studies and the Emeritus Professors in Columbia (EPIC) program, an organization of retired professors and administrators that helps them stay active in their senior years.
Each spring, SPS and EPIC work together to put on about five talks at Morningside Gardens, a thousand-unite cooperative near La Salle Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
The partnership began in 2016, when Margaret Jo Shepherd, emerita professor at Teachers College, EPIC president Jeanne Stellman, and George Calderaro, Director of Outreach Programs at the School of Professional Studies, met with Ron Bruno, social-service director at Morningside Gardens.The meeting resulted in a lecture series called EPIC/SPS Community Programs that brings the knowledge of the Emeritus Professors in Columbia into its surrounding community.
The talks are free and open to all and draw crowds of around 40 people and range over a variety of topics. Recently, Ferdinand Ofodile, emeritus professor of surgery, discussed his experience working with African diaspora groups to provide medical aid in Africa and the Caribbean and Columbia musicology professor Walter Frisch unraveled the song “Over the Rainbow.”
The next event, which has been moved online, will take place on June 3, 2020 and will feature a conversation between Barry Rosen, held hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran for 444 days, and Jo Shepherd, Professor Emerita, Teachers College, Columbia University. More information on that event here.
To read the full article about EPIC in Columbia Magazine, you can click here.
