Growing Old With Prime Time
Aging impacts everyone differently, but there is one consistent piece of advice given as you get older: Remain social. East Lansing’s Prime Time Senior Program aims to give ample opportunities to meet new people and learn new things.
Established in 1972, the Prime Time Seniors Program is run by the city and provides services to adults age 55 and over. Three new programs will be beginning fall 2026 that target problems identified by seniors in the 2024 senior community survey report.
“It’s not just fun activities we think the seniors will enjoy,” said Alesha Williams, Prime Time Seniors program director. “These are activities that are going to help them continue to live engaging, fulfilling lives in hopefully their own homes as long as possible.”
The Prime Time programs are guided and influenced by the eight dimensions of wellness: physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, vocational, financial and environmental.
In 2025, Prime Time offered 97 different programs, some offered daily, and served 810 seniors.
Seniors Commission Chair Kathy Bouchard-Wyant has been participating in the programs for a while now, but her favorite is the speaker series, where every quarter local experts are brought in to talk about different topics.
“I really love the series because it’s one topic, different areas,” Bouchard-Wyant said. “A lot of really hands-on, appropriate, applicable life skills.”
The seniors program runs a nature series in the winter. During January, participants had the opportunity to learn about herbs from Kathaleen Parker with Soulful Earth Herbals. They made tea and facial steamers out of herbs.
“I think every age group is working hard to be successful and explore life, and that is very true with seniors as well,” Bouchard-Wyant said.
Even with the array programming offered now, Prime Time will expand its offerings in the fall with three new courses that target needs identified in a 2024 East Lansing seniors survey.
The first program launching is the continuous learning collaborative program, which aims to provide year-round educational opportunities for seniors.
Working with the MSU Retirees Association and the MSU Faculty Emeriti Association, this program is a series of academically based presentations given by emeritus and current MSU faculty and other professionals. Presenters choose their own topics — such as humanities, science, or art — and each topic will be between two and six sessions.
While the seniors department’s three city employees brainstorm new programs, Williams noted that they receive great support from the Seniors Commission, which conducted the survey and revealed that seniors feel overshadowed by students in the downtown area.
To reconcile that, Prime Time is working with the Downtown Management Board and the Seniors Commission to catalog all the businesses that offer senior discounts, along with parking information and parking vouchers.
Some commissioners did a walking tour downtown to see if business owners would be interested in participating in a program to offer discounts.
“The response they got was really positive,” Williams said.
One hot topic mentioned in the survey was transportation, including the need for more door-to-door transportation, sidewalk safety and a large number of seniors utilize ride share services like Uber or Lyft.
In response, Prime Time is launching a transportation retirement series in the first week of September. They’re planning to invite speakers like the Disability Network to educate seniors on how to use public transportation and what is available to them.
Additionally, there are plans for a transportation and mobility fair, which would include local organizations like the Tri-County Office on Aging, which would set up resource tables for people to get the information easily.
Last year was the first time Prime Time hosted its first skills sharing event, where seniors teach a skill of their choosing to elementary and middle school kids. It will be returning for a second year this October in recognition of Active Aging Week. This included seniors teaching classes on different skills, such as healthy snacking or sewing 101.