Everyday Ut Prosim: How engineering student Omar Almasri serves at the Engagement Center for Creative Aging
Omar Almasri has entered the building.
He may not be Elvis, but to the over-75 crowd at Virginia Tech’s Engagement Center for Creative Aging, the senior biological systems engineering major is kind of a big deal.
“He’s like a celebrity,” said Joanna "Jo" Culligan, therapeutic program manager for the center, a unit of the Department of Human Development and Family Science that offers adult day services and other programming for older adults and their caregivers. “Everyone loves Omar.”
On a recent cold morning, program participants — with an average age of 83 — lit up when Almasri walked into the Engagement Center for Creative Aging for his regular volunteer shift. “Omar!” they cried, beaming.
“Guys, how are you?” Almasri replied cheerfully. “How was your weekend?”
The center occupies an unobtrusive, living room–like space in Wallace Hall. There are bookshelves and magazine racks stocked with People magazine and Bocaccio’s Decameron, houseplants growing lushly in big windows, sets of hand weights for exercise, recliners for napping.
On this morning, most of the older adults were gathered around a large table, preparing chocolate muffins. As Almasri started to help with the cooking, one man teased, “These will become famous as ‘Omar’s Muffins.’”
The center's participants typically have some form of dementia, often Alzheimer’s disease. But remarkably, they remember Almasri. They want to hear about his weekend, his mom, his brothers, the classes he’s taking this semester. “They ask me about every detail of my life,” he said. “I come here and it’s almost like a second family.”
Almasri wasn’t sure what to expect on his first day volunteering at the center in summer 2024. Alzheimer’s disease had prompted his family to relocate from Northern Virginia to Jordan, in the Middle East, so his mother could care for his grandmother as she suffered from it. “She passed away when I was 18,” Almasri said. “Seeing her decline, it was sad, especially for my parents. I saw the impact it had on my own family, and that was something I considered when coming here.”
Volunteers are vital to the center’s work, especially Virginia Tech students who can offer an intergenerational connection to center participants. “These are people who have lived very, very full lives, and they still have a lot of life left,” said Culligan. “I hope that when I’m older that I’m still talking to people like Omar.”
But Almasri was a little nervous going in. How was a 22-year-old Hokie supposed to make friends with an 80-year-old with dementia?
Ultimately, he approached the older adults as he would any new pal. He listened to their stories, learned their names, paid attention to their interests. Right away they loved him for it.
“For most volunteers, there’s an adjustment period,” said Culligan, “but when Omar walked in it just seemed like he was coming home,” she said.
Along with socializing with participants and helping with programs, volunteers might notice when a change in a participant’s regular engagement occurs. Distress or confusion can arise from a small change in routine or a treatable medical problem like a urinary tract infection. “Omar might say, ‘Hey, I was engaging with this person and I noticed something different,’ and I'll be like, ‘Great observation, let's figure it out,’” said Culligan. “That way we can all work together to try and optimize everybody's day.”
Jean (at left) works a puzzle with Omar Almasri. When Jean reported that center staffers kept swooping in to wash her cup before she had finished her tea, Almasri crafted a charm for the handle to remind staff not to pick it up yet (shown at right). The beads spell out "stay away." Jean was absolutely tickled by the gift. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.
After the muffins went in the oven, Almasri sat at a small table to work on a jigsaw puzzle with Jean and another participant. “You taught me everything I know about puzzling,” Almasri told Jean.
Her snarky reply was quick. “Don’t follow everything I tell you, you’ll be in trouble.”
Secretly, Jean, an elegant former library assistant, is Almasri’s favorite. “Her whole day changes when I come in, and I love that so much,” Almasri said. “I get to talk to her about everything. I love to hear her go off on a tangent.”
She seems to love him back. When Almasri snapped a puzzle piece into place, she cheered him on with grandmotherly zeal. “Way to go. I’m proud of you.”
When weather won't allow an outside stroll for exercise, participants take a walk through Wallace Hall, where they stop to tidy a planting bed in the atrium. We wanted to extend our gardening program through the winter, so we put in organic soil and added these plants so that we have an opportunity for our folks to garden, said program assistant Jenna Booth. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.
Almasri expected that volunteering at the Engagement Center for Creative Aging would offer an interesting window into neurology, one of his interests. But there have been other surprising benefits.
For one, it’s a brain break. Almasri is busy with a full load of engineering coursework and research. He’s also preparing to take the MCAT this spring, with hopes of becoming a surgeon. “I come here for two to three hours at a time,” he said, “and I just get to calm down, relax, connect, recharge my battery. Every time I leave I tell Jo, ‘This soothes me so much.’”
He's expanded his interests too. Oldies songs like “My Girl” and “Bye, Bye Love” and “I Only Want to Be with You,” streaming at the center on a Bose speaker, weren’t originally his jam. But with tutoring from one older adult participant who is a former radio show host and “music dictionary,” Almasri embraced the tunes. “Now I listen to oldies in the car,” he admitted.
Then there are the relationships he’s built with the older adults at the center. “They’re not participants, they’re friends,” he said.
The feeling is obviously mutual.
The Engagement Center for Creative Aging welcomes donations to support their work.
Do you know someone whose community service embodies the spirit of Ut Prosim? Nominate a candidate for the Everyday Ut Prosim series by emailing melodywarnick@vt.edu.
