Graduate Student Opportunities

TALC hosts a community of graduate students who study aging, and aims to support and encourage their development and endeavors. Scholars who study aging at UT Austin are dispersed across 12 colleges or schools, and multiple departments. The Center provides these scholars with an academic home, as well as providing interdisciplinary training and knowledge to keep these scholars on the cutting edge, as can be seen by the Acoustic Rendering shown below by Meng Huo, a former TALC graduate student.

Some of the things TALC does for graduate students include:

• Portfolio in Aging & Health
• Professional development seminars for graduate students across campuses with regard to aging and health
• Outside speakers series to bring innovative research from the field of aging to UT Austin
• Training workshops on specialized methods and topics in the field of aging
• Graduate Student Council

An Acoustic Rendering of an Older Adult’s Day

In late life, individuals are at risk of cognitive declines, physical impairments, and loneliness. Tracking the conversations and ambient sounds in an older adult’s daily life provides a window of how their everyday activities may contribute to or mitigate these risks. This figure resembles the top half of a clock and portrays the sounds captured in an older adult’s waking hours from 9 am to 3pm. The constellation of sound shows both risks and benefits of activities in this older adult’s experiences. The brown spikes are television viewing, when the older adult was likely sedentary and increasing the risk of physical and cognitive decline. The rainbow section portrays conversations, which mitigate risks of cognitive decline and prevent loneliness.

By Meng Huo, Graduate student & Karen L. Fingerman, Professor
Human Development and Family Sciences