Assistant Professor of Teaching Adam Fromme has joined Ohio State’s newly established Institute on Aging.

The university-wide institute brings together faculty, clinicians and educators from across Ohio State to advance interdisciplinary research and education focused on aging and healthy longevity. The institute builds on Ohio State’s existing strengths in aging research, clinical care and community engagement, with faculty from 13 colleges participating in aging-related work.

For Adam, the connection to aging goes back to his graduate work at Ohio State. While completing his MFA in Design Research and Development, he also completed an interdisciplinary specialization in aging. His master’s thesis, Co-designing with Older Adults to Create an Age-friendly Evaluation Tool for Public Places, examined how libraries, parks, retail environments and other public places could better support the social, mental and physical needs of people as they age. This research involved working directly with older adults to identify needs and developing an evaluation tool to improve public places in our communities.

Today, Adam’s work focuses primarily on design education and helping people use the design mindset to approach complex problems. He sees his membership in the Institute on Aging as an opportunity to revisit an area of research that helped shape his perspective on design. He looks forward to contributing a design perspective to broader interdisciplinary conversations about aging.