Tuesday Food for Thought

In this Issue:

• Research about parents, young adult children, and the transition to adulthood
• 50 years of rugby at Wake Forest – and how club sports can forge lifetime connections
• Machine learning/AI: what does it change and why it matters

Today’s Daily Deac brings you a few ‘food for thought’ items – data on young adult children and their parents, why your Deac might want to consider a recreational sport, and machine learning/AI. Let’s get right to it!

Research about parents, young adult children, and the transition to adulthood

It is probably well established at this point that I am a nerd for a research study about college students and families 🙂 so I was really interested in this Pew Research report. This is a really deep report, with many pages of data, and worth a careful read.

What I always find most interesting – both as the parent of a college student myself, and as an administrator – is when both students and their parents/families are asked the same question, and if there are gaps between the students’ perception of a question vs. their families’ perception. For example, on the issue of relationships and emotional support, “77% of parents say their relationship with their young adult children is excellent or very good,” whereas “59% of young adults say their relationship with their parents is excellent or very good.” So there appears to be a perception gap there – and I am curious about what that might be. Also, it spurs me as a mom that it might be worth a check in with my own student – not to pin them down on ‘how they rate me’ per se, but just to make sure our lines of communication are open enough that my ’27 can feel comfortable telling me what they need me to do differently, etc.

Anyway – dig in to this report if it interests you.

50 years of rugby at Wake Forest – and how club sports can forge lifetime connections

My friends in our excellent Campus Rec department shared this video from our local news station about club rugby at Wake Forest, which has been around for the past 50 years. It’s a great story and I highly recommend it.

One of the takeaways here, I hope, is for students to consider club or intramural sports as a way to make new friends and ‘meet your people.’ My own niece, who graduated in ’05, stumbled onto a club sport after she had an unhappy sorority recruitment and was trying to find an outlet. She joined a sport that she had never done before, and because it was a team sport, it really gave her connections and friendships and social outlets she craved. There was a happy ending too: she went through recruitment the next spring and got the one she wanted -but she probably ended up closer with her club teammates/friends than her sorority by the time she graduated.

If your Deac is looking for connection, consider our sports program in Campus Rec. There are various club sports (which often are tryout-based) or intramural sports – even if they have never done that sport before. Great things can happen.

Machine learning/AI: what does it change and why it matters

One of our faculty members shared this flyer with me about an upcoming panel discussion on machine learning/AI and why it matters. I hope your students will consider joining in for this event. Why?

Our students are going to be entering a workforce that is rapidly evolving in terms of what AI can do – how it impacts jobs, where it can work well (or not), etc. The more they know about AI and its intersection with humanity, ethics, art, the law, etc., the better equipped they will be to make good decisions with this technology.