At the start of each semester, CORE 130 students at UW-Whitewater are introduced to the Nursing Home Visitation Program as an extra credit opportunity. Well NHVP is introduced primarily through CORE 130 the program is open to all students.

As the story goes, 50 years ago, a student asked UW-W psychology professor Clifford “Doc” Obeirne if they could visit a nursing home for extra credit, which he agreed to. That request turned into a decades-long program that continues to connect generations and learning through service and learning.

The NHVP is a volunteer session led by Doc. Volunteers choose from one of six time slots to visit different nursing homes throughout the semester, where they converse and do a variety of activities. In the five decades since its founding, there have been over 250,000 visits to nursing homes in the community.

Students often say one of the most rewarding parts of volunteering in the program is the relationship they developed with Obeirne. He described the bond between him and the coordinators — students who lead the visits.

“We meet every other week and we have mutual respect and affection, because we’re trying to do something that we believe in and it’s fun,” Obeirne said. “There are frustrations — This doesn’t go right.
That doesn’t go right — but overall, the feeling is a very positive one.”

With a median placement age of 83 years old, the gap between residents and students is approximately 60 years, creating a divide in behavior and perspective between the two groups. This divide, however, allows students to learn from their older counterparts.

“I think it’s just interesting to see the values of people who are much older than us, and visiting them when they are in a more simple environment, that you get to meet them more,” freshman Grace Malloy said. “There’s less distractions in our generation, like phones and stuff, they don’t have that. So it’s nice because they’re willing to share things about the past than a group of college kids would be today.”

Beyond technical skills, the program allows students to strengthen their interpersonal communication skills with a generation they might not regularly interact with.

Junior Brooke Taylor is a psychology major and coordinator for Ridgestone Assisted Living in Delavan, organized by Jeanette. Taylor shared how the program has helped her refine her skills that would be applied to her psychological work.

“I feel like it’s taught me a lot on how to work with people of different ages, because I’ve got an experience with children,” Taylor said. “I’ve gotten experience for my peers, but really working with older people, something that I don’t do unless I’m with my grandma. … I just feel like there’s no real other way to truly get experience working with older generations than to volunteer. And so that’s a big leading thing with my discovery of what I want to do with psychology, what I want to do with my future.”

While the Nursing Home Visitation Program still offers growth, the base of the program and its volunteers remains the same.

“The program starts with love, and it ends with love,” Obeirne said. “That’s the essence of the program.”