Staff
Core Staff
Anne Basting, Executive Director; Associate Professor, Theatre
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Basting is on sabbatical August 2011 - May 2012.
Please direct inquiries to Managing Director, Sue Braden.
Office: 1163 Enderis Hall
Phone: 414.229.2732
Email: basting@uwm.edu
Sue Braden, Managing Director, Student Advisor for Graduate Certificate in Applied Gerontology
Office: 1165 Enderis Hall
Phone: 414.229.2729
Email:smbraden@uwm.edu
Melinda VerDuin, Communication & Marketing Assistant
Office: 1163 Enderis Hall
Phone: 414.229.2740
Email: verduin@uwm.edu
Anne Basting, Executive Director
Anne Basting (Ph.D.) is an educator, scholar, and artist whose work focuses on the potential for the arts and humanities to improve our quality of life as communities and individuals. For over 15 years, Basting has developed and researched methods for embedding the arts into long term care, with a particular focus on people with cognitive disabilities like dementia. Basting is author of numerous articles and two books, Forget Memory: Creating better lives for people with dementia (2009) and The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture. Basting is the recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Brookdale National Fellowship, and numerous major grants. She is author and/or producer of nearly a dozen plays and public performances, including Finding Penelope (2011), a play inspired by a year of intergenerational conversations about the myth of Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey, and professionally staged throughout Luther Manor, a long term care facility in Wisconsin. Basting holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota, and a Masters in Theatre from the University of Wisconsin. She continues to direct the award-winning TimeSlips Creative Storytelling Project, which she founded in 1998, and is currently at work launching TimeSlips’ new ( free!) interactive website (timeslips.org), featuring a prompt library of over 100 images and questions, and bringing creative engagement to elders and their families wherever they live. Basting gives keynote addresses on the power and potential of creative engagement across the world. As Director of the CAC (aging.uwm.edu), Basting fosters partnerships between scholars, students, and service providers, and translates applied research into innovative educational tools including manuals, films, and social media. Basting teaches playwriting, storytelling, and creative engagement in long term care; and is curricular coordinator of CAC’s new summer institute CREATE/CHANGE: Transforming care for elders through creative engagement.
Sue Braden, Managing Director
Sue Braden (MS) is the Managing Director of the Center on Age & Community. She is responsible for managing staff and operations of the Center's many innovative projects, including marketing and communications, applied research, and educational programs. Braden completed the CAC's Graduate Certificate in Applied Gerontology and holds a Master's degree in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from UWM's Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management.
Melinda VerDuin, Communications and Marketing Assistant
VerDuin is the Communications & Marketing Assistant for the UWM Center on Age & Community. She holds a B.S. in Business Administration and is pursuing graduate work in Non Profit Management at UWM.
