Michelle Sierpina, Ph.D.
Founding Director, UTMB Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, TX
Dr. Michelle Sierpina, Founding Director of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UTMB in Galveston, Texas, began her work in eldercare in the 1960s. She developed a series of life story writing and sharing group modalities, which, taken together, form The Pentimento Project. Combining life story with Visible Lives storyboard intervention and TimeSlips©, a storytelling group modality for those with dementia, she offers facilitator training in UTMB’s Creativity Continuum to health care professionals, laypersons, and volunteers in Texas and around the country. She guides others in forming and leading life story groups from New York to Nevada and New Zealand to Greece and recently Italy and Russia.
She has taught at the UT Houston Center on Aging, University of Nevada, Reno, St. George’s Medical University in Grenada, and at conferences around the nation, as well as at UTMB’s Institute for the Medical Humanities and School of Nursing Graduate Program. Sierpina has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics in gerontology, spirituality, and creativity in elders. Continuing her research on life story writing and sharing groups, she studies and nurtures creativity among elders across the entire continuum of functional capability.
Under her leadership, OLLI at UTMB has received three consecutive $100,000 annual grants from the Bernard Osher Foundation and a $1 million endowment (with $50,000 bridge funding) in 2008.