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On a sweltering, 100-degree morning in Tempe, Ariz., Roger Weinreber made his way across the street from his apartment to the woodworking studio on the campus of Arizona State University. A handful of the class’s 11 students had already gathered, and he walked around, chatting with them. But Mr. Weinreber isn’t a student. He’s their teaching assistant — who celebrated his 80th birthday on Saturday.
“The students love Roger,” said Damon McIntyre, an instructor for that morning’s advanced wood shop class, whom Mr. Weinreber has worked with for the past two and a half years. “He’s such an asset.”
Mr. Weinreber is one of 373 residents at Mirabella, a retirement community that opened at Arizona State in 2020. They live in the heart of campus in a 20-story high rise and take classes, attend athletic and performing arts events, sit on thesis committees and help international students practice their English skills.
For retirees, university retirement communities offer the option to indulge their passion for lifelong learning in an environment that allows for intergenerational interaction with younger students.
“It’s interesting to see their thought process, and to recognize the difference between my generation and subsequent generations,” said Mr. Weinreber, who moved to Mirabella with his wife, Mary Weinreber, 80, in 2023. “Things that I might take for granted, they look at and say, ‘What?’”
Since the 1990s, at least 86 of these communities have opened across the country, including the Village at Penn State in State College, Penn.; University Commons at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Vi at Palo Alto at Stanford University in California. There has been a particular boom in the last 15 years, said Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University, who developed a website to track them.
“Some of us are looking at 20, 30 more years,” said Mr. Carle, 66. “So we want to do something other than just play another round of golf.”
Many Mirabella residents, all of whom are at least 62, volunteer as teaching and lab assistants; participate in the university’s pen pal program, which pairs them with college-age students; or serve as informal mentors, allowing them to pass on the knowledge they’ve acquired in their careers to the next generation, said Lindsey Beagley, 42, Arizona State’s senior director of lifelong university engagement. Approximately 80 percent hold at least a master’s degree, and 19 percent are retired university faculty.
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