University students join St. Camillus seniors in an exercise of encouragement and conversation, fostering team-based coaching to build core strength, reaction time and real-life mobility in the Intergenerational Mobility Program. (Submitted photo)
It’s a win-win-win. Seniors grow in mobility. Marquette University students grow in their professional skills. And each grows in recognizing where God works through their weekly encounters.
St. Camillus Life Plan Community, a Catholic senior community in Wauwatosa that offers independent living, assisted living, memory care and home and community-based services and hospice, is collaborating with Marquette University in helping extend the quality of life for its residents through a groundbreaking Intergenerational Mobility Program.
The program, which happens on Fridays and is paired with a strength and balance program on Sundays, takes participating seniors and focuses on activities they have enjoyed in their lives and attempts to increase mobility and strength doing something they love.
“Whatever it is you love, I use that in the program,” said Bridget McNair, Director of Life Enrichment at St. Camillus. “I help you excel with five basic components of hip sway — side to side movement, hip mobility, step height, core strength and standing balance, and then I added reaction time.”
McNair said she had a vision of creating a program that differs from normal fall prevention skill programs for seniors, one that was focused on sports training.
“One of our board members from Marquette University connected me with the physical therapy department,” McNair said. We had several different meetings to collaborate. They placed me at a table with all the exercise science-focused professors. I met Chris Simmons, the placement director for Marquette University physical therapy interns in their junior year. He worked with me, and I ended up with eight interns from the physical therapy program in my first semester, and that’s how it all began.”
Four Marquette students participate now, along with four others from Wisconsin Lutheran College, while Marquette University High School students have made special visits during retreats.
“They’re not in the therapist role. They are in the role of coach,” McNair said. “It’s more of a team mentality, a different way to approach increasing physical mobility, making gains.”
“It makes you do things that maybe you couldn’t before, but I never feel like I’m pressured,” St. Camillus resident Stephie Zagar said.
“I do leg lifts and arm things, and just standing and getting up and down.”
“We try to encourage them to not only do the exercises when they’re here, but when they go back to their apartments here or back to where they’re staying,” Marquette junior Eileen Homberger said. The exercise physiology major from Oak Park, Illinois, works alongside Zagar and other seniors on both Fridays and Sundays.
“When you’re leaning over, you’re picking up something from the floor. When you’re leaning back up, you’re putting something on a shelf. They think about that and they apply it to real life. It’s not just exercise, but they’re actually doing something that will be beneficial for them when they’re at home.”
Homberger works with a man whom she calls a “prankster” and focuses on golf-related actions in their sessions.
“That’s fun to learn from them and see how that brings light to their day, and how they’re excited to do these fun activities that they used to do when they were younger,” she shared.
“I’m definitely learning patience (and) I’m also just learning how to care for the whole person.”
Maggie McCarty, a fellow junior exercise physiology major from Mahtomedi, Minnesota, has been learning to care for seniors by seeing her own grandmothers receive physical therapy.
“They thrived with more movement in their lives, and especially that direct connection with a physical therapist helped their mental health as well as their physical,” McCarty said. “That initially motivated me.”
She gets to motivate residents like Rosemary Maier, who bonds with McCarty as a Marquette alumna.
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it,” she says.
“It inspires me to do my very best. I find I’m more enthusiastic. I’m traveling around more, and it really has helped my attitude and just my wanting to participate in more things.”
The theological truths that come from this experience are also not lost on students like Homberger and McCarty, who also espouses Marquette’s motto of Cura Personalis.
“God was a servant and he did what he was asked. He gave himself to living selflessly,” McCarty said.
“Here, especially, and at Marquette too, you want to care for the whole person. I definitely see God in just learning how to love your neighbor, to really support them,” Homberger adds. “They all have their different struggles, so you learn to help them and love them for who they are.”
McNair said that this program is creating tangible signs of the miraculous in some residents who may never have thought they could progress the way they have in their mobility.
“It’s hard to believe that these residents are doing the things that they’re doing in the program. You can feel the goodness in just watching everything play out,” McNair shared.
“There are times where you step back, and this woman is walking after she hadn’t walked in 10 years. We had a resident that was on hospice and her husband passed away. It was looking like she was just going to give up. We put her in the program. She graduated from hospice and now she’s thriving.”
Perhaps Zagar simply put it best about God’s presence every Friday and Sunday in the program.
“He’s just part of the group.”
