This proposal for an academic career leadership award for John C. Morris will establish the Center for Aging at Washington University. The Center will provide academic and administrative leadership to foster the development and implementation of activities that foster productive aging. Productive aging is closely allied with the concept of successful aging and broadly encompasses the goal of growing old with good health, vitality, and engagement. The University-wide Center will promote research, education, and service initiatives to enable older adults to remain healthy, active, independent, and contributing for as long as possible. The imperative for a Center for Aging is to meet the challenge of effectively integrating into society the growing and vigorous older adult segment of the population. Washington University is particularly well positioned to meet this challenge. There is a strong base of ongoing, high-quality research on aging, especially in three of the University's eight schools: Social Work, Arts and Sciences (Department of Psychology), and Medicine. The Center will enhance: ongoing research relevant to aging and enable new investigators to acquire research skills, mentoring, and experience; will generate new ideas and promote new lines of interdisciplinary and collaborative research, and it will serve as a local, regional, and national resource for aging research in general and productive aging in particular. The award will permit implementation and achievement of the inaugural specific aims of the Center: create a pilot project program to encourage innovative aging-related proposals by junior investigators and more senior investigators who are new to aging; attract junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students to the field of aging by means of awards for proposal development; and provide travel stipends to attend scientific conferences pertinent to aging, and other educational experiences. Dr. Morris is firmly committed to accomplishing these aims and, with this award and with outstanding institutional support, to establishing a preeminent Center for Aging at Washington University.
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