Student Opportunities

The Trager Institute offers a variety of student opportunities across several disciplines, including social work, engineering, and geriatrics & palliative medicine. We invite you to explore how your passions, skills, and interests could be strengthened by joining the Institute's team. Contact us to learn more about customized programs for legal students and nursing students.

Social Work Practicum Placement

Join a dynamic team at the Institute for Sustainable Health & Optimal Aging and experience social work in a clinical and macro setting. This demanding and rewarding practicum placement will uniquely prepare you to be a leader at all levels of social work.

The Institute is seeking students who are:

• Self-starters who are motivated to become experienced social workers.
• Committed to equity and justice for all.
• Interested in working with a diverse population of clients.
• Excited about team-based learning.

The Institute which is dedicated to creating sustainable health and optimal aging is located at 300 E. Market Street, near UofL's Health Science Campus in downtown Louisville and is two blocks away from the UofL medical and nursing schools. It is housed in the Atria Support Center in a brand-new 8-story office building located in the J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Institute consists of 4 faculty, 7 staff, 3 community organizers, 7 community health navigators, 2 graduate assistants, and 2 Geriatric and Palliative Medicine Fellows.

Your practicum will give you specific training in medical social work including care coordination, geriatrics assessment, Motivational Interviewing, and program coordination. You will have the opportunity to be part of various events held by the Institute, including lecture series, the Gold Standard Award for Optimal Aging, and the annual Optimal Aging Conference. At the Institute, all students will participate in our Flourish program as community health navigators. Other projects that you may be involved with at the Institute include:

• The Louisville Age & Dementia Friendly Initiative
• The Kentucky Coalition for Healthy Communities (KCHC)
• EngAGE Arts (in collaboration with Fund for the Arts)
• Memory 360: Compassionate Engagement fro Individual with Cognitive Decline and their Caregivers
• Psychological Non-Epileptic Seizure (PNES) Project
• Intergenerational Community Initiatives

The Institute is a fast-paced environment where research, education, innovation, and practice intersect. We believe that students are key to our work and we invite you to join us on the journey of changing the way our community thinks about aging and the serves that we provide to older adults.