It is a rare event to have even one centenarian in the room; but on Sunday, Nov. 11, there were 10 centenarians in the Lowenstein Center’s 12th-floor Lounge at a reception to honor a Fordham University centenarian study headed by Daniela Jopp, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology.

The reception was attended by centenarians, their families and friends, researchers, and some members from the Brookdale and X Prize Foundations who supported the study.

The goal of the Fordham Centenarian Study is to document what it means to live at age 100 and above, and to raise awareness around the growing but little-studied population.

Jopp detailed results from her two-year study, including the challenges and psychological strengths of centenarians, and honored the unique stories of the individuals who were able to attend the event.

Grant Campany, senior director of Archon Genomics X Prize, gave a presentation on their “100 Over 100” competition, and its role in identifying rare genes that increase longevity and good health.

Two centenarians were interviewed before those in attendance and shared their feelings about longevity.

To read more about Jopp’s study, see Inside Fordham’s article on her research.

She became interested in studying the new college student as a result of her work at Heidelberg University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she studied the interplay between personal resources, strategy use and self-referent beliefs.

“I studied the way these factors helped people develop in life, but particularly in adults of older age, also in centenarians,” she said. “I studied how they set general goals and pursued those goals, how much they were supported by their social resources, as well as their beliefs—what gave them the motivation to think they could do something or whether they felt helpless in certain situations.

“Having explored those elements with respect to adults at old age, I came to wonder, ‘How does it come to be that way? How do we develop those strategies? Do we bring some from our primary families or do we learn about those things when we are in difficult situations?’”

The subject of study—students entering college—is a means to examine, through both subjective and objective measures, the efficacy of specific mechanisms involved in adapting to social stressors.

Jopp plans to conduct an empirical study on 200 students. And, yes, Fordham students are her target study group.

“We will assess them at the beginning of the semester and the beginning of the second year,” Jopp said. “The idea is to have a look at how they experience the situation of starting here, what they have in terms of resources and strategies available when they come, and how much they get stressed in the beginning.”

“Using that information, we hope to figure out whether there have been changes in their resource repertoire, strategies and beliefs. Increase in these factors hopefully shows a positive effect so that they are better able to deal with the situation,” she said.