Members

Prof. Marita Grudzen,

Associate Director Emerita of the Stanford Geriatric Education Center, 

Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford University,

Stanford, California, USA

Marita Grudzen is Associate Director Emerita of the Stanford Geriatric Education Center, Stanford School of Medicine, where her expertise is in the area of spiritual and cultural diversity at the end of life. With her colleague, Jewish Chaplain Bruce Feldstein, MD, she received a five-year Templeton Award for required curriculum in the School of Medicine, Spirituality and Meaning in Medicine, as well as an elective course, The Healer’s Art. A published author, her most recent article in the Journal of Aging, Religion and Spirituality (2017) is “Ritual as a Pathway to Transcendence in the Lives of Older Adults.” Prof. Grudzen has lectured extensively nationally and internationally (Japan, Turkey, and Kenya). Marita has been on the review board of the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Aging, Religion and Spirituality, for 10 years.

Marita served as Chair of the Spiritual Advisory Group for the Stanford Clinical Pastoral Education Program for six years and has mentored the fellows in the new Spiritual Care Fellowship. She continues as a member of the Advisory Board. Marita and her husband have developed and co-directed an Interfaith Program for Teachers in Kenya who represent Christian, Muslim, and Indigenous faith communities, “Paths to Peace Kenya.” Marita has been appointed Chair of the Stewards of our Common Home for the San Jose Diocese. As faculty of Global at the Ministries University, she currently teaches two courses: Spirituality and Aging and Laudato Si: Care for Our Common Home.

In addition to receiving a 5-year Templeton Award with her colleague, Bruce Feldstein, for Curriculum Development in Medical School, she has received several awards. Among them are two international Awards: one for leadership in Turkey and another for developing an International Conference on the Care of Older Persons, with 29 countries represented in Istanbul, Turkey. The second one was with her husband for leading an international “People to People” response during the famine in Bangladesh, where the Grudzens accompanied the relief and documented by video that it was distributed to those most in need through village clinics.