Right now, it’s just an empty field of grass on the southeast side of campus. But the university hopes to create a place for retirees to have direct access to campus, right out their front door. They’ll also be surrounded by younger students working towards degrees.
Making sure these new members of the campus feel that they belong will be important.
Noriko Toyokawa is an associate professor of psychology at SOU, and studies intergenerational relationships.
“I'm kind of interested in what kind of friendship we can develop across generations and how we can develop,” she said. “But first, we need a space.”
Across the street from this future facility is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, or OLLI. It’s where retirees can take classes on everything from world cinema to vegetable gardening.
Inside one of the classrooms, students from the Emerging Media and Digital Arts program showed off something called the “Game Garden.” It's an intergenerational gaming space that could be built at the living facility.
Dani Wilson’s group created a board game designed to build friendships.
“We thought that the most all encompassing, something that was easy for everyone else to enjoy would be some kind of item collection,” Wilson said.
Other groups focused on different aspects of the Game Garden, like graphic design, marketing and environmental design.
Professor Bobby Arellano said a friend told him about how her son got her into video games later in life, and found his students shared similar experiences.
“Enough of them said they had a personal story of a kind of playing Scrabble with their grandparents that I realized this was something we all could put our own hearts into, as well as our thinking caps,” he said.
He also admits that he needed to schedule one more class for the Fall term. Thus the class was born. Arellano wanted students to explore how games can bring students and seniors together.
Intergenerational relationships can be beneficial for everyone. A recent study from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga found that conversations between college students and older adults helped the students gain a better perspective on their older peers.
Other research has found that living in intergenerational spaces can help fight loneliness and isolation in older adults and break down ageist perceptions.
Designing the space
Initially, it was designed around video games, but when student Michael Ralston visited the Ashland Senior Center he found that the older people there would rather play Mahjong than video games.
“When I was asking, ‘Would you want to try VR? Would you want to play video games?’ They said, ‘It sounds like a great thing, but why can't I do that in my room?’” he said.
Ralston found that a lot of the people showing up to the senior center were doing it for the social aspect. Sure, some of them really liked Mahjong. But they also liked the relationships they built with fellow players.
So students started to design a space that was more than just about video games. It includes space for board games, arts and crafts and more. The space is designed to build connections between people.
“There are benefits for long term physical as well as mental health.”
The proposed design by students would include couches around TVs with video game consoles, a crafts and board game area and a section of computers they envisioned could be used for streaming. Arellano imagined the space opening up right onto the fourth hole of the SOU Disc Golf course.
“We could see people saying, ‘You know what, let's take this Tron VR game that I learned on the Xbox and bring it outside with some disc golf and keep playing in the real world,’” He said. “There are benefits for long term physical as well as mental health.”
While students were thinking beyond video games, retiree Tom Lamoree said that he knows other seniors like himself who wouldn’t mind trying video games.
“A senior who moves into the intergenerational housing is going to be more open to learning more things,” said Lamoree. “They're moving there because they want to have kids around them.”
Just like for college students, video games might not work for everyone. Some people are going to be drawn to other ways of socializing and that’s important when thinking about designing for connection.
Noriko Toyokawa said intergenerational bonds need to be cultivated naturally.
“We can't force anyone to be there at a certain time, right? So it’s natural, kind of design thinking,” she said. “Design the place will solve the problem.”
Following in the Sun Devil’s footsteps
SOU isn’t the first place to try something like this. At a similar living facility at Arizona State University called Mirabella, residents are all given student ID cards, ensuring they have access throughout the campus. ASU Senior Director of Lifelong University Engagement Lindsey Beagley works to ensure that senior residents feel like they belong on campus.
“They go walk their dog, they have a coffee on campus, they run into a classmate,” she said. “These are the sort of organic exchanges that are possible when you eliminate the real geographic barriers, but also perhaps the perceived barriers about who belongs on campus.”
Mirabella opened in 2021, and Beagley said it was a completely different idea of senior living compared to how people typically retire in Arizona.
“We glamorize the idea of these retirement communities, these active adult communities that are 20 miles outside of the urban center,” she said. “So as a consequence, we sort of shot ourselves in the foot in that young people don't see later stages of life. And so we overcome a lot of those misunderstandings and stereotypes just by creating spaces where they both belong.”
Bobby Arellano said he’s trying to create that kinda vibe, by incorporating his proposed gaming space into the future living facility on campus. He’s hoping the students can be involved in the design.
“If you really want an intergenerational learning community as well as a play community, you have to listen to the students,” he said. “You have to take their ideas seriously and occasionally put budgeting behind their ideas and take some risks to achieve great things.”
SOU doesn't expect to choose a developer until early next year. So Arellano wants to pilot this space elsewhere before the living facility is built, in partnership with somewhere like the Ashland YMCA or the senior center.
This class isn’t finished, either. Arellano said he wants to bring it back in future terms, and have students continue to flesh out the details of what an intergenerational space could look like. And if possible, he hopes to get the students to work with the university administration and the developers once one is chosen.
He believes this will just be one of the tools that can be used to help cultivate relationships between college students and their new neighbors.
