From April 12-14, 2023, the McGovern Center hosted a small conference in honor of Thomas R. Cole, PhD, founding director of the Center.
The conference consisted of a dozen scholars who presented and workshopped papers touching on key areas of Cole’s academic contributions, including aging, life stories, racism, the field of medical humanities, health humanities films and documentaries, literature, and more.
Cole was recruited as the founding director of the McGovern Center, then known as the Health and Human Spirit Program. His work has included many articles and books on the history of aging and humanistic gerontology, civil rights and desegregation, and several documentaries and textbooks on faculty health and medical humanities education.