{"id":5252,"date":"2012-05-09T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=5252"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:10:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:10:13","slug":"ch-ch-ch-changes-sociology-prof-studies-the-transitions-todays-emerging-adults-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=5252","title":{"rendered":"Sociology prof studies the transitions today’s emerging adults experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sociologist Tim Clydesdale is interested in transitions.<\/p>\n

His first book, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School<\/em>, examined the lives of students in their first year out of high school, including their transition to college. His next book, to be titled Changing on Purpose: When Students and Professors Find Their Calling <\/em>and funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., will offer an in-depth look at the college journeys of students at 25 campuses across the nation. And Clydesdale is already planning a third, which he said will focus on his observations of young adults from the United States, Canada, and Australia in the first year after college.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Professor Tim Clydesdale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019m moving up in the life cycle in some ways, having been interested in what happens to folks after high school\u2026. It was just kind of a natural progression,\u201d said Clydesdale, a professor and chair in TCNJ\u2019s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. \u201cAt some point I\u2019d like to study the transition from work into retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clydesdale, who interviewed 125 American college students during their senior year and year after graduation, saw certain patterns among emergent adults in the United States. He created a \u201ctypology\u201d of approaches to life which he said young adults fall into after college, including \u201ccareer zealots,\u201d \u201cdeeply partnered,\u201d \u201cdeniers,\u201d \u201cstunned strugglers,\u201d \u201cdelayers,\u201d and \u201coutsiders\u201d\u2014religious and otherwise \u201calternative\u201d individuals who forge their own path, such as through travel or service after college.<\/p>\n

Most American students are \u201cstunned strugglers,\u201d Clydesdale found, meaning that when they leave college they struggle in a \u201csink-or-swim\u201d world and move back in with their parents.<\/p>\n

Both of Clydesdale’s current projects have given him insight into what he thinks is causing this trend, as well as what is\u2014and isn\u2019t\u2014working on American college campuses.<\/p>\n

While varied books, newspaper articles, and movies have analyzed new trends in the period that sociologists call \u201cemerging adulthood\u201d\u2014from The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>\u2019s May 2008 article \u201cAmerica\u2019s Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor\u2019s Degree\u201d to the 2006 movie Failure to Launch<\/em>\u2014Clydesdale thinks he found a new piece of the puzzle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think liberal arts education is on some level not understood, is under attack in the wider American culture, and there are number of reasons why that\u2019s so. I think one of the bigger reasons is that (colleges) gave up a generation ago asking these questions,\u201d he said. His study of 25 \u201cchurch-related\u201d college campuses, which ranged from Duke University to Boston College to Messiah College in Pennsylvania, led Clydesdale to conclude that certain undergraduate programs can make a big difference in a young adult\u2019s transition to adulthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese campuses developed programs to engage students on questions of meaning, purpose, vocation,\u201d said Clydesdale. \u201cI was studying the impact of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Clydesdale, students who took advantage of hiking trips, speakers, movies, and service projects that engaged students in discussions of life meaning had less difficulty in the adjustment period after college. This is why he believes more colleges should foster increased \u201cself-knowledge\u201d and awareness of both personal skills as well as a sense of \u201cself-transcendence\u201d\u2014the knowledge that \u201cthere\u2019s a bigger world out there\u201d and it\u2019s not \u201call about me,\u201d said Clydesdale.<\/p>\n

In particular, he pointed out the relative success of the \u201coutsiders\u201d in navigating life after college. These young adults who \u201cintentionally set paths of their own choosing \u2026 (had) a clearer sense of purpose,\u201d said Clydesdale.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf (colleges) graduated many more students with a global perspective, who wanted to make a positive impact \u2026 I think that they would really dial down the criticism,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is the public good? What is the good worth pursuing? \u2026 We need to re-engage these questions. They need to be asked again.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Clydesdale engages his students in discussion of the deeper questions, and he thinks that others might be surprised how beneficial the process can be for educators as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe educators (I studied) found these questions sort of invigorated them as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Tim Clydesdale has identified a \u201ctypology\u201d of approaches to life that young adults fall into after college, and has a theory as to why many young Americans are what he refers to as “stunned strugglers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":5256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,52,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","category-may-2012","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}