Fielding Graduate University to Honor Mary Catherine Bateson With Lifetime Achievement Award in Positive Aging

The award will be presented during the Fifth Annual International Conference on Positive Aging for which Bateson is the keynote speaker. Co-sponsored by Fielding, the conference is being held December 6-9, 2011, at the California Endowment Center, 1000 N. Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA. Information is available at www.positiveaging.fielding.edu.

Bateson has taught at Harvard, Northeastern, and George Mason Universities and since 2006 has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College. She travels extensively to lecture on her model of Active Wisdom, which covers community dialogue, the contributions and improvisations of engaged older adults, and the consciousness of the life cycle through which she explores intergenerational communication and ways of experiencing time. At the conference, Bateson will deliver the keynote presentation, a dialogue about her latest book, Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom.

The conference theme, “Innovation in Positive Aging,” invites an exploration of the ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to the question What does it mean to age well? During dynamic, interactive sessions, presenters and participants will consider issues of community, wellness, creativity, and life transitions as they relate to the aging population – both those in the midst of the experience and professionals working in the field.