Emily Roberts receives DaVinci Institute Fellowship

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

College of Human Sciences faculty member Emily Roberts will receive one of five DaVinci Fellowships from the Oklahoma DaVinci Institute on Friday, March 31. 

Roberts is an assistant professor of interior design in the Department of Design, Housing and Merchandising where her research focus is in environmental gerontology - the study of the person-environment fit between older adults and the physical environment. She has conducted international research in long-term care programming for older adults living with dementia, as well as caregiver resilience research for family caregivers living at home with a family member with dementia. As an interior design educator, she is dedicated to sharing the values and sustainable practices necessary to create a culture of aging which is life-affirming and meaningful. 

Roberts is a founding member of the OSU-Alliance on Aging which developed the interdisciplinary Active Aging for L.I.F.E. public health initiative in 2016. The four- session initiative was offered on the OSU campus in spring 2016 with the purpose of educating older adults and college-age students about the concepts of Active Aging relating to the domains of Longevity, Independence, Fitness and Engagement.

This spring, Roberts and the OSU-Alliance on Aging will be taking teams of these older adult and college age student participants into Stillwater High School to share the Active Aging programming. The intergenerational teams will help present the programming in each of the four L.I.F.E. domains over a two-week period to 75 high school students. The goal of the Active Aging for L.I.F.E. programming in the high school will be to allow for important intergenerational relationships to form, while building a platform to address perceptions and behaviors around health and wellness across the lifespan.

As a DaVinci Fellow, Roberts receives a $1,000 award and a DaVinci Vitruvian Man medal. 

The mission of The DaVinci Institute is to promote a statewide creativity renaissance through lectures, workshops, professional development, research and advocacy. The DaVinci Institute believes creative thought and insight are fundamental components of extraordinary scholarship, invention, teaching, and performance across academic disciplines. The DaVinci Fellowship funds creative projects, broadly defined, among Oklahoma’s higher education faculty.