A Note From:
IOA Director Victor Marshall
As our lead news item says, I will be stepping down from the position of Director of the Institute on Aging at the end of June. This will complete two five year terms. I will remain affiliated with the IOA, where I am Principal Investigator and Director for our training program, CPHAR (The Carolina Program for Health and Aging Research), and where I will continue to be involved in other research projects and the Aging Workforce Initiative. However, I will now move to a full-time appointment and a full course load in the Sociology Department.
I relinquish the directorship with considerable pride in its growth and accomplishments over the past ten years. The Institute on Aging has a complex mission. As an ‘interinstitutional program of the UNC system’, it has a mission to serve the state; but is also has a leadership mission on the UNC campus. Unlike many other centers and institutes that are focused solely on research, the IOA has strong commitments to service and education. Ten years ago I drew on the few ‘charter documents’ for the IOA to formulate our mission statement: To enhance the well-being of older people in North Carolina by fostering statewide collaboration in research, education, and service. That is a goal statement rather than an objective, by which I mean, it is a direction in which to continue moving but not one with a specific benchmark that would lead anyone to say, “OK, we can stop now”.
As I leave the directorship, I also wish to thank some folks—too many to list other than by category. A Canadian steel company used to advertise, “Our product is steel; our strength is people.” The strength of the IOA has been and will continue to be a wonderful collection of people at all levels, associate directors, research scientists, administrative and information technology support staff, research coordinators and assistants, librarians, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students; senior leaders—housed within the walls of the IOA and also outside those walls. Partnering with those of us who ‘live here’ are numerous others—faculty from UNC at Chapel Hill and other campuses, who serve as mentors in our training program, collaborate in our research (and we in theirs), and serve on our committees; an informal Chapel Hill campus aging leadership group I refer to as ‘the usual suspects’, including Jan Busby-Whitehead, who serves as an associate director of the IOA to ensure that we have good collaboration with the clinical side of the campus; public servants from the Division of Aging and Adult Services, the Division of Public Health, and other government departments; AARP officials and staff from the national and state level, and the many AARP volunteers who attend our events and help out; the formal partners, including Ann Johnson (chair) and other members of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Aging who have worked with us to make the North Carolina Conference on Aging and the Forum on the Aging Workforce such huge successes. To all of you—and you know who you are, I thank you for your commitment to and involvement in the IOA, and I look forward to ongoing interaction as I continue to be involved myself.
Centers and Institutes are threatened in light of the current fiscal crisis. The IOA was asked to put together a document that would serve to justify our existence. A consolidation of reports from several centers and institutes on the UNC at Chapel Hill campus is found on the university website, including the report specific to the UNC Institute on Aging. I urge you to read this report and I hope you will conclude that the IOA has been highly successful in meeting its complex mission. But as I said above, our mission is ongoing and never-ending. Job One is to see our way through the current economic troubles, but I am confident that the Institute on Aging will continue to serve the UNC at Chapel Hill campus, and its statewide mission, and that its future is one of growth.
An interim director will be appointed for July 1, and a search will be conducted for my successor. I wish both people all the best as they guide the Institute on Aging into the future.