One of the many things I love about working in the field of adult development and aging is that it always challenges me to look at the world around me from a different perspective. My recent work with the Age-Friendly University (AFU) initiative endorsed by D20 has opened my eyes even more and inspired new work with D20 and our APA divisional partners – which I hope will help us all advance greater age inclusivity locally, nationally, and globally. This work includes a recent CODAPARopens in new window grant received for a study entitled Putting Age-Friendly Principles into Practice: Supporting and Engaging Late-Stage Career Psychologists in APA. The study is a collaboration of Divisions 20 (Adult Development and Aging), 12-2 (Clinical Geropsychology), 2 (Society for the Teaching of Psychology), and 18 (Psychologists in Public Service), and is funded by the APA Interdivisional Grant Program.
Our study was motivated by evidence of the impact of historic shifts in age demographics on social structures that include both higher education and professional organizations. More specifically, the common conception of higher education being age-segregated has been overturned by recent research on the demand for greater age inclusivity in U.S. institutions, which has revealed that campuses are quite age-diverse communities when the ages of faculty, staff, and students are tallied. (Join us in Minneapolis at the D20 Presidential Symposium to learn more.) This new view of higher education is reinforced by other data showing that compared with the general workforce, more tenure-track faculty are age 55 or older (McChesney & Bichsel, 2020). Thus, campuses have become natural environments where long-time faculty members “age in place in the workplace” and have the capacity to contribute to the educational, research, and community efforts of an institution in many ways for many years. Such is also the case for professional organizations like APA where a sizeable number of members are 60 years of age and older and identify as being in their late- or post-career stages of their professional lives (see APA Division Dashboardopens in new window), calling for APA to consider how it can support their professional needs and engage their professional experience.
Seeing how aging is playing out on our campuses and at APA offered D20 and its divisional partners a unique opportunity to extend the AFU philosophy to explore APA divisional practices with a more age-friendly lens. To this end, the CODAPAR project draws on AFU Principle #9, which advocates for engaging actively with one’s retired community. We are using a survey approach to gather information about how APA can be more age-friendly, with a particular focus on how APA Divisions can better engage and provide support to members who may be considering retiring, are transitioning through retirement, or have retired. The survey also explores how higher education can better support late-stage career APA affiliates. The project was also motived by research and theory in the adult development and aging literature showing that whether one refers to this phase of professional life as a period of renewment (Bratter & Dennis, 2013), revitalizing retirement (Schlossberg, 2010), or reenvisioning (Frasch et al., 2019), the nature, timing, and appearance of retirement has changed – warranting a closer look at how individuals are navigating this phase of their careers, and how professional organizations can support and engage them (Sterns & McQuown, 2015).
You are invited to participate in the CODAPAR project by completing this survey: CLICK HEREopens in new window or cut and paste this link in your browser: https://paloaltou.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_02mX4PuKkkCMcTQ
Thank you for your time! The results will be used to identify specific strategies APA and its Divisions can use to make our organization a more age-friendly professional environment, as well as to inform how higher education can support APA affiliates as they move into later stages of their academic careers.
References
Bratter, B., & Dennis, H. (2013). Project renewment: The first retirement model for career women. Scribner.
Frasch, K., Goulden, M., Stacy, A., & Broughton, J. (2019). Thinking about retirement: Policies for late-career and retired faculty. American Association of University Professors. https://www.aaup.org/article/thinking-about-retirement#.YRqteecpA2x
McChesney, J., & Bichsel, J. (2020). The aging of tenure-track faculty in higher education: Implications for succession and diversity. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. https://www.cupahr.org/surveys/research-briefs/
Montepare, J. M. & Whitbourne, S. (2022). Advancing age inclusivity - Insights from the Age-Friendly Inventory and Campus Climate Survey (ICCS). Division 20 Presidential Symposium, American Psychological Association, Minneapolis, MN.
Schlossberg, N. K. (2009) Revitalizing retirement: reshaping your identity, relationships, and purpose. APA Lifetools Series: American Psychological Association.
Sterns, H. L., & McQuown, C. K. (2015). Retirement redefined. In P. A. Lichtenberg, B. T. Mast, B. D. Carpenter, & J. Loebach Wetherell (Eds.), APA Handbook of Clinical Geropsychology, Vol. 2: Assessment, Treatment, and Issues of Later Life (pp. 601–616). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14459-023