Make Your Pitch: A Flexible Assignment for Engaging Students in Aging.

Given trends in local, national, and global demographics, a need exists for educators in fields that serve older adults to provide innovative and engaging assignments that are relevant and applicable to the diverse contexts in which students are likely to find themselves as they pursue their careers. This article discusses a novel "elevator pitch" assignment that could be implemented in a number of ways to fit a variety of pedagogical methods and courses and further tailored to serve the needs of diverse student populations. For those working to actively and successfully recruit, train, and retain students in fields that serve older adults, such flexibility of assignments and delivery are likely to be acutely important as institutions, instructors, and students continue to adapt to rapidly changing developments such as those imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I want to focus on something that I feel really good about every day": Career development in established adulthood.

In developed countries, education and career experimentation typically extends into people's twenties (Arnett, 2000, 2015; Mehta et al., 2020). Thus, people are not committing to a career path in which they can build expertise, take on increasing responsibilities, and climb an organizational ladder (Day et al., 2012) until they reach established adulthood, the period of development from 30 to 45. As the conceptualization of established adulthood is relatively new, little is known about career development during this period. As such, in the present study, we aimed to provide a better understanding of career development in established adulthood by interviewing participants (n = 100) aged 30-45 from across the United States about their career development. Some participants described Career Exploration in established adulthood, sharing how they were still searching for a good career fit, and how a sense of diminishing time related to how they explore career paths. Participants also described Career Stability in established adulthood, including feeling committed to a career path, noting that there were some drawbacks to this stability, but also benefits in terms of feeling confident in their roles. Finally, participants described Career Growth, and shared their experiences of climbing the career ladder as well as planning for the future and possible "second acts". Taken together, our results suggest that established adulthood, at least in the USA, brings some stability in terms of career paths and development but that it may also be a period of career reflection for some.

Life task appraisals, spouse involvement in strategies, and daily affect among short- and long-term married couples.

The purpose of this study was to examine predictors and consequences of spouses' involvement in each others' strategies for pursuing important personal goals called life tasks. Husbands and wives within 39 short- and long-term marriages described five life tasks and provided appraisals of whether each was shared with their spouse. Participants later completed 14 consecutive diary entries recording daily life task pursuit strategies, the extent of spouse involvement in each, and measures of positive and negative affect. Results indicated that interdependence in life task appraisals prospectively predicted greater spouse involvement, and greater spouse involvement was associated with more positive affect for that day. Life task appraisals may provide avenues for understanding couples' strategies for dealing with goals or stressors and how those strategies affect mood.

Recruitment of rural and cognitively impaired older adults for dental research.

The recruitment of community-dwelling older adults, particularly those with cognitive impairment and those residing in rural areas, has been consistently challenging for researchers, especially in the dental field. This study reports on recruitment experiences from an ongoing study investigating the association between oral health and cognitive status in later life. Multiple recruitment strategies, including educational presentations and traveling to participants' homes, were used to enroll rural elderly participants with various levels of cognitive function. In general, multipronged, proactive recruitment strategies were more effective than traditional, passive methods in reaching participants with varying degrees of cognitive impairment. The outcome of this study suggests that successful recruitment of such populations involves gaining the support of staff at relevant community organizations, informing community members (including older adults and their family members) of the project and the importance of oral health, and making data collection sites accessible for older adults.