For the members of Goldy’s Senior Squad, a dance squad made up of residents of The Pillars of Prospect Park senior living community in Minneapolis, fame was an adrenaline-spiked surprise – and one that they were eager to embrace.
The Pillars is located adjacent to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, and that proximity has led to a wealth of opportunities for members of both communities since it opened in 2020. If there is a headliner to the relationship between the community and university so far, it’s Goldy’s Senior Cheer Squad. The dance squad, a partnership with Gopher Athletics, has performed at the university’s basketball games, and it routinely practices with the school’s renowned dance team. This past season, the squad performed at halftime of the Minnesota women’s basketball team’s much-hyped matchup with Iowa and its superstar Caitlin Clark. The game was sold out, and the senior dance squad ate up the chance to strut their stuff in front of thousands of enthused fans.
“The building was packed, the atmosphere was insane, and they just crushed it,” said Michelle Riedel, residential design and services integrator, Oppidan Investment Company, which partnered with Ebenezer Management Services to develop the community. “They had so much fun and were on cloud nine after their performance. They’re getting recognized now at games, and they love that.”
Local news carried highlights from the performance and interviewed members of both the university and senior living dance squads. Kianne Vouavichith, a member of the university’s dance squad, told the reporter that the opportunity to work with Goldy’s members was invigorating. “I hope they have as much fun as we do because, for us, it’s like one of my favorite practices, especially in the spring semester – just to be able to spend time with them.”
Jamie Korzan, vice president of investor relations for Oppidan, said Goldy’s team members joked about attracting sponsorships through their newfound local celebrity status. In that vein, Goldy’s member Fred Jacobs quipped to the TV reporter, “A lot of people refer to it as the Iowa game. It’s really The Pillars senior cheer squad game.”
“It was amazing to see everyone’s excitement and energy coming out of that because they were all so jazzed up about it,” Korzan said. “It was so much fun.”
Goldy’s Senior Cheer Squad, which started as a dance class designed to keep residents active and to provide opportunities for fellowship, understandably has attracted attention, but it is just one of the thriving intergenerational programs or activities that is already a hallmark of The Pillars community and its relationship with the university. The Pillars is the official senior living community of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, allowing the residents to each receive a free membership to the association. Residents attend UMN OLLI classes and take advantage of myriad lifelong learning opportunities.
The Pillars opened in May 2020 soon after the pandemic began. COVID-related limitations made arranging meaningful engagements initially difficult but launching the community under the shadow of COVID also opened opportunities, Korzan said. University-related groups were in search of creative alternatives to their regular structure, schedule and relationships, and The Pillars offered flexibility and ways to pivot to new ways of educating and engaging students.
With time, the community found its footing in the university ecosystem.
“I think that’s a testament to the team that we have on site and their thoughtfulness and attention to details and planning,” Riedel said. “You have to be so detailed and intentional when you are launching new partnerships, and they’ve done such a good job.”
The Pillars created a position dedicated to ensuring the relationship with the university is a successful one. That position ensures that no one loses sight of the details of making the partnership work – from maintaining balanced programming to managing the logistics of getting residents where they need to go to participate in university activities. The Pillars has a large number of University of Minnesota alumni as residents, as well as several former faculty members, helping build bridges between the communities.
Riedel said professors and leaders of university programs who work with The Pillars inevitably are pleased with the results and look for ways to grow and strengthen the partnership. They also spread the word about their experiences, leading to more academics reaching out to the community with ideas.
“We have worked with professors and leaders of programs who say, ‘Okay, this opportunity turned out fantastic, so now next semester let’s add this and add this,’ and then we’re getting calls from people saying, ‘Hey, so and so said you worked with them on this. We’d love to try this opportunity with you,’” Riedel said. “We’re at the point now where we have to be very selective, because we can’t do everything, so we can focus on those that are great opportunities and great fits for us.”
‘Eye-opening’ opportunities for students
Intergenerational opportunities are sometimes as powerful for the students as they are for the residents. For instance, the 283-apartment community at The Pillars includes some studio apartments that are not always easy to fill. Seeing an opportunity, the community’s operators invited students to live in some of those apartments. As part of the deal, the students pay reduced rent in exchange for volunteering a minimum number of hours in the community with an emphasis on their skill sets and interests. This past year, 14 students lived at The Pillars and contributed more than 400 hours of time with residents.
The Student Residence Housing Program is part of the Intergenerational Connections offered by Ebenezer, which is the largest senior living housing operator in Minnesota. Ebenezer currently operates Intergenerational Connections in five senior living communities.
Korzan said students in the residency program typically are a diverse group with an international flair.
“It’s been fun to see those students embed themselves in our communities,” Korzan said. “They come in and do things like teach Spanish classes or tech classes for our residents, and they really create their own calendar every month with a plethora of events. Our residents love it. We have different generations in the building interacting with each other in this great way. The students are required to do 10 hours of volunteer service each month, but oftentimes they are going above and beyond that because they enjoy spending time with the residents and staff there.”
UMN students also participate in learning opportunities with seniors at The Pillars, including from university programs such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, the Minnesota English Language Program and the School of Public Health, Aging Studies Interdisciplinary Group.
Last year, occupational therapy students from the university spent several weeks studying intergenerational programming between seniors and a childcare center located at Prospect Park. Based on their observations and research, the students put together best practices for the program and suggested ways to refine it.
“It was such a cool moment where we had students working with seniors and children to refine the programming and learn, and then they educated the staff on ways that we could make it better, and a lot of that’s been implemented since then,” Riedel said. “There’s just a lot of great things that happen because of the relationship that we have.”
For students, it’s simply “eye-opening,” Riedel said. Students see the variety of options available to them in the industry – encompassing everything from marketing and sales to programming and resident care – and “it gives them a different outlook on senior living,” Riedel said. “It’s not a dull, quiet, dreary place. It’s active and fun, and it can be awesome.”
Students get the invaluable chance to do real-world work related to their coursework. In addition, the world of senior living becomes a viable one for their careers.
“We’re opening up a lot of people’s worlds to senior housing and what a future in that career could look like,” Korzan said. “And we’re getting that feedback from students that are participating. They’re like, ‘We didn’t even know this existed. We love it.’ That has been a big highlight of this.”
At the conclusion of the occupational therapy students’ program, one student explained how sad she was that she would no longer be at the community on a regular basis, highlighting the strong relationships she’d formed with residents. It was exactly the kind of lasting and purposeful experience The Pillars team hopes to develop.
“It’s about creating those impactful encounters between our residents and students, and we believe that’s changing the trajectory for both sets of people,” Korzan said. “They’re getting community and relationships that go beyond the partnership.”
A fresh outlook
The Pillars opened a daycare on site at the same time the senior living community opened its doors. Many university and Ebenezer employees use the daycare for their children. Children who range from infants to near-kindergarteners come into the community on a daily basis to do programming, such as by going into the memory care unit for music or art classes that they take with the residents there. Residents also visit the kids at the daycare.
“We have one resident who was a teacher who goes into the daycare and reads to the kids, and she actually has helped teach a few classes about stuff that she’s passionate about, which has been fun to see,” Korzan said. “They also have a rockabye club where seniors can go into the nursery and rock the babies to sleep.”
Sara Wellington, the mother of two children at The Pillars Child Care, said she loved the idea of her children befriending residents from the community.
“Children learn so much from older adults – compassion, wisdom, respect, and responsibility,” Wellington said. “I think both ends of the age spectrum carry similarities in what they find most meaningful – having a place where they feel safe and loved. There is great beauty in providing a space where those needs are nourished while delighting in the company of others. I love when we walk around the neighborhood and my son (age 5) says, ‘Look mom, there’s one of my grandfriends!’ when we see an older adult. Instead of feeling shy or scared, he is engaged and excited.”
Korzan said that one resident of The Pillars said interacting with the children in the daycare helped her see “the promise of the future.”
“I think that captures the program really well because it’s giving our residents the opportunity to have a different experience than they would otherwise,” Korzan said. “It’s giving them a completely different outlook.”
Korzan said it’s important to highlight that The Pillars sees participation in university-related and other intergenerational activities from many of its residents – not just a select group.
“It’s a very active senior that lives there,” she said. “They’re looking for opportunities to continue to learn. They like to be challenged. It’s such an active community that it’s crazy. There’s always so much going on. There is an opportunity to do something different and exciting every day because of these partnerships.”
