Tom Meuser, director of the Gerontology Graduate Program at UMSL, was featured Sunday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (Photo by August Jennewein)

University of Missouri–St. Louis gerontology expert Tom Meuser has done some great things since taking over the helm of the Gerontology Graduate Program at UMSL. Many of those were touched on in a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile of the gerontologist.

In addition to growing the program, which was only created in 1981, Meuser, professor of social work, has added additional courses and online classes. He’s created the UMSL Life Review Program, which allows students to interview participants on camera about their lives, and he’s established a mock assessment course giving students real-life experience in diagnosing individuals.

Meuser, who is an alumnus (PhD clinical psychology 1997), has also done some pretty great research himself. He’s worked with the Missouri Department of Transportation to improve the state’s elderly driver patient evaluation form. The new form enables physicians to assess driving ability by rating patient vision, cognition, alertness and movement.

His recent paper “The American Medical Association Older Driver Curriculum for Health Professionals: Changes in Trainee Confidence, Attitudes & Practice Behavior” won the 2011 David A. Peterson Award for best article from the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. And he’s a newly appointed member of the Independent Transportation Network America’s Research Group, a door-through-door transportation service with affiliate branches all over the United States.

For more on Meuser, check out the question-and-answer piece by reporter Denise Hollinshed published Sunday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.