Life History Project

Gerontology program undergraduate and graduate students have been collecting life histories of older men and women as part of a service-learning project since 1985. The program began to record and archive sociological biographies based on these interviews, with participants' permission, in 1995. Dr. Covan has collected more than 400 life histories of women in their 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's whose lives span the 20th Century.  Several of these are now available in Randall Library.  An article on Dr. Covan's research on the meaning of aging in women's lives has been published in the Journal of Women and Aging, Vol. 17:3: 3-22.