Claiming Space: Older Adult Students’ Lived Experience and Sense of Belonging on an Age-Friendly University Campus

Abstract

The over 65 population will reach 77 million by 2034 in the United States—a mere eleven years from now (Vespa, 2018). Aging demographics in the United States is part of a much larger global phenomenon of population aging. As such there has been a universal push to meet the specific needs of older adult learners (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2022). This dissertation, using a multi-methods case study approach, examines the intergenerational learning experiences of older adult students at a large public Age-Friendly University (AFU) in the midwestern region of the United States, the University of Minnesota. The goal of this research is twofold, namely 1) to facilitate a greater understanding of the lived experiences of these older adult students (primarily aged 62+) who have chosen to enroll in classes alongside 18–22-year-old students and 2) to determine, from the perspective of older adult students, the university’s progress toward realizing two of the ten age-friendly principles outlined by the AFU Global Network. The two principles I focus on are 1) to encourage the participation of older adults in all the core activities of the university, including educational and research programs and 2) to promote intergenerational learning to facilitate the reciprocal sharing of expertise between learners of all ages. Using Strayhorn’s (2019) conceptualization of college students’ sense of belonging as my conceptual framework, I explore the following research questions: 1) How do older adults participating in traditional college/university courses characterize their lived experience on AFU campuses? 2) How do these older students describe their ‘sense of belonging’ to these institutions? 3) What role does a sense of belonging to the campus community play in an older student’s ‘successful’ college/university experience? To date, there remains a significant gap in scholarship that directly engages with older adult students about their experiences on higher education campuses (Cannon et al., 2023; Chesser et al., 2020; Lim et al., 2023). The results of this study help to fill that striking gap in the literature. The study reveals that older adult student success is defined by multiple factors including individual preparedness, intergenerational engagement, experiences of joy, a sense of unbounded opportunity, and institutional supports that foster a sense of belonging to campus. With these findings as a foundation, I introduce the Voices of Older Adult Students (VOAS) action model along with substantive steps that can be adopted by other universities to nurture campus environments that promote older adult students’ sense of belonging and contribute to their overall collegiate success.