Ep. 26: Changing How We Work with Phyllis Moen, University of Minnesota

This month we happily welcome Phyllis Moen, current McKnight Endowed Presidential Chair in Sociology at the University of Minnesota, and former Cornell faculty and founding director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell. Chris and Phyllis discuss her research on the mismatch between outdated work-time and career/retirement scripts and 21st century workforce and economic realities. She also studies gender differences and disparities at all stages of the changing life course. The old templates of work life no longer fit changing demographics and culture. Trying to apply these old work formats today leads to issues in the health, mental health, and family life of workers. Moen specifically discusses the problem areas and how to update our ideas of how work should work. Phyllis Moen is a life course scholar interested in the mismatch between 20th century clocks and calendars shaping work, careers and the gendered life course and 21st century demographies, technologies, risks and realities. She directs the Life Course Center, holds a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair, and is a professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, following 25 years at Cornell University. While at Cornell, Dr. Moen founded the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center as well as the first Alfred P. Sloan Center on Work and Families, the Cornell Careers Institute. Dr. Moen’s latest book is the award-winning "Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose" (2016). Her newest project, the University of Minnesota Advanced Careers Initiative (UMAC), aims to reimagine higher education to include intergenerational relationships and to serve as an innovative catalyst promoting meaningful encores for Boomers.