Happy New Year from Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research!

Register Today for our

Have you ever considered starting up an Advisory Board for your organization? Join our webinar and learn the “Whys" and "How-Tos” to help you build and sustain an effective advisory board (even virtually).

The transition from college to career includes many challenges, such as adjusting to a professional environment, the high costs of student loan repayment and independent living, and changes in social support networks. Many of these challenges affect a young person’s emotional wellbeing; however, limited attention has been paid in the literature or at the practice level to the emotional wellbeing of college graduates as they transition from college to career. To address this underrecognized issue, investigators from The Jed Foundation (JED), a leading nonprofit organization with a mission to protect the emotional health and prevent suicide among teens and young adults, and the Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research (Transitions ACR) at the UMass Medical School collaborated on a study to better understand the experiences of young adults during the college-to-career transition and how these experiences effect emotional wellbeing. This tip sheet shares the results.

HYPE School Preparation beginning 1/25/21

HYPE Career Decisions beginning 1/22/21

To register, email  HYPE@umassmed.edu and let us know you are interested.

Check out more details here: https://www.umassmed.edu/hype/hype-course-in-ma/.

Find out how to bring HYPE to your community here: https://www.umassmed.edu/hype/

Now is a good time to review the Tip Sheet we published for College Students this summer called: Should I Attend College in the Fall? Questions for Students with Mental Health Conditions to Consider.

As the pandemic continues into winter, and social distancing and mask wearing are the norm, college students with mental health conditions have another difficult decision to make. Should they return to classes for Spring semester? Will the plan that their college has presented for next semester be one that they can adapt to? Will the accommodations they might need be available? Will the way classes are being taught work for their learning style? This Tip Sheet from Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research poses questions that students will want to consider when thinking about the Spring semester.

These Tip Sheets were created by our TEST research team to help young adults take a leadership role in their IEP meetings. The Translating Evidence to Support Transitions (TEST) project has created practice guides to increase the use and adoption of 3 research-informed practices for the transition planning of high school students with emotional disturbance who receive special education services: student-led IEP meetings, community agency representation at IEP meetings, and concentrations of CTE coursework along career pathways. Find out more and download the practice guides at the TEST website.

The tip sheet posted above, "Adulting is Hard: Understanding the College-to-Career Transition and Supporting Young Adults' Emotional Wellbeing" summarizes a full report that Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research and the JED Foundation collaborated on called College to Career: Supporting Mental Health. This report was undertaken to better understand the challenges to emotional wellbeing faced by young adults during the college-to-career transition. We addressed the following questions:

1. What emotional challenges do college seniors face as they prepare to leave college?

2. What can colleges do to address these challenges?

3. What emotional challenges exist for recent college graduates entering the workforce? 4. How can employers support the emotional wellbeing of young adult hires?

Then we provided recommendations for colleges and employers and presented why it was important for these institutions to focus on mental wellness.

Read the full College to Career Report here.

Read the Tip Sheet HERE.

Have you joined us on Instagram yet? This is where our young adults take over, including new memes created by our Youth Advisory Board. This stakeholder engagement group adds youth voice to the research we do. They will provide input throughout the entire process from development of interview questions to effective ways to translate the results into content that works for youth stakeholders. Along the way, they help us create some content for our social media channels, including Instagram. If you haven't checked out what we are dong there, visit us at https://www.instagram.com/transitions_acr/.

You can learn how to start your own youth advisory board from this pre-recorded webinar.

Tips and Tricks To Starting a Young Adult Council webinar.

Or join our upcoming webinar on starting a Family Advisory Board and see what we've learned about virtual boards during a pandemic.

Register now for our January 21st Webinar: Tips and Tricks to Developing and Sustaining a Family Advisory Board.

The Massachusetts Department of Mental Health Research Center of Excellence, the UMass Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC), is pleased to present our 2020 Annual Report. This report recaps the work our center has done over the past year, including our many new initiatives, our collaborations with the Massachusetts Dept. of Mental Health and other agencies, our community engagement programs and our stakeholder engagement programs. We encourage you to share it with colleagues. Read and download it HERE.

The Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research promotes the full participation in socially valued roles of transition-age youth and young adults (ages 14-30) with serious mental health conditions. The Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research (Transitions ACR) is located within the Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC) and houses The Learning & Working During the Transition to Adulthood Rehabilitation Research & Training Center (The Learning & Working RRTC), among other projects.

The Learning & Working RRTC is a national effort that aims to improve the supports of this population to successfully complete their schooling and training and move into rewarding work lives. 

Some of the contents of this message were developed under a grant with funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, United States Department of Health and Human Services (NIDILRR grant number 90RTEM0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this message do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, and/or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.