Changing it up in Midlife
May 2, 2024
Most people think of college as a place to go at the beginning of your career. In keeping with our strategic goal of being a university for life, CU Denver is reimagining higher education as a place for people at the end of their primary working years as well.
A CU Denver program called Change Makers brings experienced professionals who are approaching or already in retirement back to college for a semester to explore possibilities, retool, and renew their purpose. And it’s striking a chord with CU Denver alumni, who have made up a fifth of our 62 Change Maker fellows since the program started in January 2023.
Ready for Change
Changing careers can be tumultuous, especially for those at midlife and beyond. It helps not to go it alone. That’s what the participants in Change Makers find as they learn and collaborate to explore their next chapters over the course of four months together on campus.
With professional backgrounds ranging from accounting, engineering, and law to journalism, teaching, and healthcare, Change Maker fellows have built successful careers and honed a range of skills and talents. They come to the program ready for a change — to use those hard-earned skills in new ways, for new jobs or meaningful volunteering. And they leave at the end of the semester with new perspectives, friends, and ideas for envisioning and plotting their next step.
“Part of the power of the program is the collective connections that participants offer each other,” said fellow Todd Matuszewicz, who’s now pursuing a master’s degree in historic preservation at CU Denver.
An Accessible Option
Change Makers is part of a handful of university programs across the country that help older adults transition well from one life stage to another, providing the opportunity to reflect, reset, and renew a sense of purpose for the next phase of our lengthening lives. Most of these programs are yearlong and in residence, in places like Palo Alto and Cambridge, MA, and cost between $60,000 and $80,000.
Change Makers is designed to be a more accessible option, in terms of time and money, just like CU Denver is. One semester long. Costs $3,400. Twice-a-week sessions held in the evenings so folks who work on weekdays can attend. Tuesdays remote and Wednesdays in person downtown, where our Change Maker fellows continue building a trusted community with one another.
Impact
Our approach is working. In our end-of-course surveys, 97% of respondents say the program helped them think differently about their next chapter, assess their strengths and aspirations, and envision where they want to go next. 100% say they would recommend the program to a friend.
“Being a part of the Change Makers cohort gave me a community to support a major change in my life using my own life as an anchor for my future life with incredible new resources and people to lean on,” said Julia Shepherd, who earned her principal licensure and Education Specialist degree at CU Denver. “Kudos to UCD for supporting this program. As an alum I am proud to spread the word about it.”
Providing people with the time, space, and supports to think about what they want next is something universities have traditionally done for people at the start of their careers. Why not in the second half of life as well?
Now accepting applications for the Fall 2024 semester and Spring 2025 semesters.