left to right, Charles F. Bolden Jr., Hans Ulrich Maerki, Vivian Lowery Derryck, Susan Leal and Charles R. Denham. Photo by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times.

Steve Lohr of The New York Times reports:

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

The 14 fellows have résumés brimming with achievement — including a former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.

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The Harvard experiment is part of a larger effort to help find productive “next” careers for a coming flood of retiring baby boomers — more than 75 million people born from 1946 to 1964. Many of them resist the traditional retirement ideal of leisure and travel.

Indeed, more than five million Americans who are 44 to 70 are already engaged in a stage of work after their first careers that has a social impact, mainly in education, health care, government and other nonprofit organizations, according to a survey this year by Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

Such later-in-life, second acts have been called “encore careers,” “postcareers” and “engaged retirement.” No matter the name, the concept seems to have considerable appeal, encouraged by celebrity role models like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton.

Half of Americans age 50 to 70 want to find work that has a social impact after their primary career ends, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates.

“There is a pretty significant pool of interest and the question is whether they will be able to act on that interest in large numbers,” said Marc Freedman, chief executive of Civic Ventures, a nonprofit organization whose programs and research focus on social careers for baby boomers.

Civic Ventures and other groups have sponsored programs at community colleges to develop initiatives that match people’s experience and skills to later-in-life careers in education, health care and social services.

The Harvard program, along with the community college efforts, represents “the fitful creation of institutions and pathways for this new stage of engagement and purpose in the second half of life,” Mr. Freedman said.