Sharon Daloz Parks

Mentoring Emerging AdultsSharon Daloz Parks has written Big Questions, Worthy Dreams to inform and inspire renewed commitment by educators, church leaders, and others to consider the institutional and cultural patterns that affect emerging adults. It serves to bridge the divide between generations and to encourage more adequate recognition of what is at stake in the response of all who interact with emerging young adult lives.Our economic and political life has become more brittle, volatile, and global, which both enlarges and constrains young adult aspirations. Today's emerging adults are both more connected and more distracted. And religion and faith have become both problematized and polarized. Parks defines faith as meaning-making in its most comprehensive dimensions, whether expressed in secular or religious terms. Over time, our meaning-making orients our sense of purpose, moral stance, and competence.The book describes the potential vulnerability of emerging adults and shows how mentors and mentoring environments can provide access to big-enough questions and inspire dreams worthy of engaging with our challenging and complex world. Parks addresses important issues of the day, including violence in our culture, social media and networking, economic challenges, changing racial identity, cultural shifts, and other forces shaping the narrative of emerging adulthood today.

THE “TWENTY-SOMETHING” YEARS of emerging adulthood are increasingly recognized as a distinctive but puzzling era in the human life span. In this tenth anniversary revised edition of her 2001 classic, Sharon Daloz Parks, a pioneering voice in young adult development theory, builds on the foundation she established over two decades ago in The Critical Years, in which she recognized this significant stage in the human life span and underscored the role of mentors in the lives of young adults. The emerging adult years constitute a new challenge to individuals, institutions, and cultures. It matters whether emerging adults move through the twenty-something decade on default settings or are well prepared for citizenship and leadership. Focusing on critical features of human development—transformations in thinking, feeling, and networks of belonging—Parks describes the potential and vulnerability of emerging adults and shows how mentors and mentoring environments can provide access to big-enough questions and inspire dreams worthy of engagement with a challenging and complex world. Parks casts the emerging adult years within the task of making meaning in a dramatically changing world—a task that all human beings share. She helpfully recognizes “faith” as meaning-making in its most comprehensive dimensions, whether expressed in secular or religious terms, and how over time our meaning-making orients our sense of purpose, moral stance, and competence. This tenth-anniversary revised edition of Big Questions, Worthy Dreams is written for faculty and administrators in higher and professional education, supervisors in workplace settings, community leaders, parents, and for all who are open to deepening their understanding of emerging adult lives. This updated edition addresses recent issues and events, including (among others) violence in our culture, mixed spirituality and religious identities, social media and networking, the economic crisis, changing racial identity, cultural shifts, and other forces shaping the narrative of young adulthood today.

Helping College Students Find Purpose Today's college students are demanding that their educational experiences address the core questions of meaning and purpose. . . What does it mean to be successful? How will I know what type of career is best for me? Why do I hurt so much when a relationship ends? Why do innocent people have to suffer? Faculty and administrators are in the unique position to make special contributions to their students' search for meaning, and when they work together, everyone on a college campus benefits. Helping College Students Find Purpose provides a theory-to-practice model of meaning-making that enables the entire campus community to participate in the process. Based on a practical how-to approach, the authors outline a series of concrete steps for applying the theory and practice of meaning-making to teaching, leading, administering, and advising. Filled with real-life vignettes, this guidebook includes the background knowledge and proven tools that will help faculty and administrators act as effective mentors to students. While there is no single solution that can meet everyone's needs, the authors provide a series of classroom and cross-campus strategies that are specifically designed to help students successfully navigate their diverse meaning-making activities and effectively enhance their quest for meaning.

If leaders are made, not born, what is the best way to teach the skills they need to be effective? Today's complex times require a new kind of leadership--one that encompasses a mind-set and capabilities that can't necessarily be taught by conventional methods. In this unique leadership book, Sharon Daloz Parks invites readers to step into the classroom of Harvard leadership virtuoso Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues to understand this dynamic type of leadership and experience a corresponding mode of learning called "case in point." Unlike traditional teaching approaches that analyze the experiences of past leaders, case in point uses individuals' own experiences--and the classroom environment itself--as a crucible for learning. This bold approach enables emerging leaders to work actively through the complex demands of today's workplace and build their skills as they discover theory in practice. Through an engaging, you-are-there writing style, Parks outlines essential features of this approach that can be applied across a range of settings. In the process, Leadership Can Be Taught reveals how we can learn, practice, and teach the art of leadership in more skilled, effective, and inspired forms. Sharon Daloz Parks is director of leadership for the New Commons--an initiative of the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, WA. She has held faculty and research positions at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.