Gerontology Ph.D.

The Doctoral Program in Gerontology is an intercampus, interdisciplinary research degree program at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

The program provides an interdisciplinary and integrative perspective on the process of human aging and the experiences of growing old. The approach acknowledges the complex, dynamic, and bi-directional relationships among individuals and the historical, political, economic, environmental, psychological, social, cultural and biological contexts in which aging occurs.

The goal of the program is to train a new generation of gerontology scholars conversant with interdisciplinary and integrative paradigms and research designs employed to examine the unique, reciprocal, and dynamic nature of aging in context.

UMB’s six professional schools (dental, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work) and UMBC's School of Arts and Sciences departments (economics, public policy, psychology, and sociology & anthropology) combine to make this mission possible by offering three tracks of study: epidemiology of aging, policy for the elderly, and social, cultural, and behavioral sciences.

The program benefits from its close proximity to federal agencies located in the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area such as the Social Security Administration, Administration on Aging, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), as well as numerous private and non-profit organizations dedicated to age-related programs and policy, research and service.