The two-year grant from Temple University's Center for Intergenerational Learning was awarded to Northridge health science professor Deborah Sheets and CSUN's Center for Community Service-Learning. Northridge was one of only four institutions nationwide selected to receive such a grant from Project SHINE (Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders).

SHINE, funded through the Corporation of National and Community Service, is designed to strengthen the relationships between academic subject matter and community service by promoting the institutionalization of service-learning.

"(SHINE) will give students in a variety of disciplines the opportunity to apply their classroom theory skills with a population that is often isolated and overwhelmed by a new country," said Maureen Rubin, director of the university's Center for Community Service-Learning.

The program, slated to launch in fall 2004, will provide 40 service-learning students each semester with an opportunity to tutor or mentor, for academic credit, community elders at five senior and community centers or adult schools throughout the San Fernando Valley.

"SHINE will bring new opportunities to CSUN students who have already been working with an ethnically diverse older population in a variety of community settings," said Sheets, who is also coordinator of CSUN's Interdisciplinary Gerontology Program. "SHINE adds new dimensions to student learning while providing a valuable service to one of our community's most under-served populations."

Through a combination of explicit learning objectives, preparations and reflection, the Center for Community Service-Learning, founded in 1998, provides students with guidance and inspiration in their pursuit of achieving academic success through meaningful community service to nonprofit and public organizations.

Having focused her career on aging with physical disability, assistive technology and intergenerational service learning, Sheets received a Ph.D. in gerontology and public policy from the University of Southern California.

She is a fellow in the Gerontological Society of America, and currently serves on the boards of the American Society on Aging, the California Council on Gerontology, the Geriatrics Education Center at UCLA and the Alzheimer's Association.