Unlocking Vocation through Community-Engaged Learning

The post introduces community-engaged learning (CEL) as a powerful method for vocational exploration, emphasizing its role in developing students’ social responsibility and career readiness. By facilitating meaningful interactions with community partners, CEL encourages students to discover their talents, question personal priorities, and engage in reflective practices to deepen their understanding of vocation.

The first post in a series on the role that community-engaged learning can play in vocational exploration and discernment.

As a high-impact practice, community-engaged learning (CEL) has long been valued for fostering students’ social and personal responsibility, improving their learning and career readiness, and increasing student retention. We argue that CEL has another, rarely examined power: it is a powerful avenue for exploring vocation. In a 2025 webinar, Rachael Baker describes vocation as a capacious concept that stretches into all aspects of our lives, is open to all people, and summons us to consider the flourishing of individuals and communities. CEL nudges students to move beyond their narrow interests to examine their vocation or purpose; the latter is defined by Bill Damon as “a long-term, active commitment to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.”

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W.E.B Dubois’s Vocational Legacy: Inspiring Justice and Activism

This post examines W.E.B. DuBois’s vital contributions to sociology, emphasizing his insights on race and marginalization. The post highlights that DuBois’s legacy inspires students facing challenges in academic and professional settings. His concept of double consciousness helps validate minority experiences, empowering students to navigate oppressive systems and pursue meaningful vocations.

The final post in a series on how the great sociological thinkers from the past can help us understand the struggle of today’s students as they explore and discern their vocations.

Until recently, W.E.B. DuBois was not considered one of the founding fathers of sociology. In The Scholar Denied, eminent sociologist Aldon Morris documents how and why academic institutions and leaders have downplayed DuBois’s ideas over the past century. Despite DuBois’s significant achievements, Morris argues that scientific racism prevented him and his work from being recognized as foundational to the discipline of sociology. Today, however, his contributions to the discipline—including methodological innovations, pioneering insights in the sociology of race, and empirical studies of African-American communities in the United States—are seen as central not only to sociology, but to public sociology, a tradition which unites scholarship and activism. His sociological insights into these areas also provide important ways to approach vocational exploration, especially for anyone responding to the call of justice and for the students with whom we work who are marginalized or minoritized.

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The NetVUE Big Read: Exploring Diverse Perspectives and Vocational Reflection

On January 28, NetVUE hosted its first webinar of the year, discussing Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s book, Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling. Faculty members shared diverse experiences relating to the book’s themes of callings that encompass joys and challenges. The session included discussion, audience engagement, and resource sharing, with a recording available online.

Webinar presenters and host: (top row, left to right) C. Douglas Johnson and Esteban Loustaunau; (bottom row, left to right): Tara Brooke Watkins and Rachel Pickett.

On January 28, NetVUE hosted its first webinar of the calendar year, which explored this year’s Big Read—Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling—from diverse perspectives and lived experiences. Three faculty members from NetVUE institutions reflected on the book’s major themes, including the reality that responding to our callings often requires us to wrestle with both the joys and the hardships that we face in our many roles in life. The presenters shared some of their vocational experiences that resonated with Miller-McLemore’s framework, hoping to help webinar participants find their way into it even if their lived experiences differ from the author’s.

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Coddiwompling: Meandering with Purpose

The post discusses the concept of “coddiwompling,” representing the unpredictable and meandering journey of vocation and career. It emphasizes embracing unexpected detours, learning from failures, and recognizing that personal growth often arises from these challenges. The author encourages students to navigate their paths purposefully, adapting to life’s uncertainties.

As I concluded my last post, I left readers with a word that I think best describes my thinking about vocation, calling, and career—coddiwompling. Coddiwompling is an English slang term loosely defined as meandering in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination. In this post, the final one in my series, I will use this term to explore the circuitous vocational journey that many of us find ourselves on and its implications for our students.

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Being and Becoming in Community: Hearing Vocation through the Indigo Girls

The author reflects on how the Indigo Girls’ music influenced their understanding of identity and community, especially during adolescence in a restrictive environment. Their songs foster kindness, activism, and self-reflection, serving as a catalyst for personal growth and social awareness. The music is portrayed as a bridge between the secular and sacred in life.

a couple lying down while playing ukulele
Photo of two young people enjoying music together by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

The practice of discerning and living into one’s callings is often deeply influenced not only by overt barriers but also by implicit messages that shape what seems possible in our lives. As a child of the 1980s, I yearned for representation that countered the oppressive gender roles in the world around me in the small northern Michigan town where I grew up. Most viscerally, I noticed my own discomfort with the pervasive narrative that I would have a husband and children someday, regardless of what my paid work would be. In my adolescence, queer life was invisible; but when I listened to music, I experienced a sense of being-in-community and was invited into self-reflection about who I was called to become.

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Conversations on Craft and Career: Guiding Passionate Students

This post discusses the challenges faced by professors and students in non-career-focused majors, who often encounter pressure to prioritize economic returns. It highlights the importance of supporting these students in pursuing their passions while managing potential regrets. The author emphasizes the enduring value of craft and its impact on cultural legacy.

photo of woman wearing white long sleeves and black pants while sitting on floor looking pensive
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

It’s true: there are still some professors and students who choose fields of study and complete majors that don’t solely open career pathways. It’s true: faculty and students in these majors must withstand the relentless and usually unsophisticated pressures from parents and peers to resist academic preparations aimed primarily at a short-term return on economic investment. It’s true: faculty and students in these majors feel marginalized and devalued for their calling, which is viewed as irrelevant and archaic, or worse, irresponsible and regressive.

For mentors and advisors in these areas, the challenge remains: how does one begin an effective conversation with students who are interested in educational opportunities outside the narrowing focus on career preparation?

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A Call to the Small: Barbara Brown Taylor

The latest episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Barbara Brown Taylor, a renowned author and public theologian. She discusses the importance of recognizing personal and external callings, emphasizing the value of small, local actions. Taylor encourages prioritizing life-affirming pursuits and remaining attentive to personal vocations amidst life’s demands.

Barbara Brown Taylor

NetVUE’s podcast Callings has released its first episode of the new year, featuring New York Times best-selling author Barbara Brown Taylor. In addition to the many award-winning books that she has written—including Holy Envy, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and An Altar in the World—Barbara has served as an Episcopal priest, a teacher, and a public theologian. For many years, she held an endowed chair in religion and philosophy at Piedmont University, a NetVUE member institution, and she has served on several seminary faculties as well as the theological studies certificate program at Arrendale State Prison for women. Barbara has been recognized as one of the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University, and in 2014, Time magazine included her on its list of “The 100 Most Influential People.” She has been named the Georgia Woman of the Year and recently elected to the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame. And beyond all these accolades, she continues to write and speak and serve as the caretaker of a farm in rural Georgia.

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The Power of Sticky Notes in Teaching Vocation

Teaching can be challenging, especially regarding discussions about vocation. The use of sticky notes emerges as an effective tool for fostering engagement and connection among students. They encourage manageable tasks, promote interaction, and help individuals share their values and fears, facilitating deeper conversations about purpose and community in a supportive environment.

Teaching is hard. Teaching vocation may be even harder.

It can be tricky to bring a new audience of students, educators, or really anyone into conversations about vocation. It requires true vulnerability—both among participants and from their facilitator—to get folks to think and talk about their past, present, and future; their values and desires; and especially their doubts and fears. We need tools that can help us speak and listen to each other, lowering the stakes of group activities while at the same time increasing engagement in them.

What if I told you I knew of such a tool? In fact, a wonderous tool—one that is inexpensive, widely available and almost infinitely adaptable?

person writing on pink sticky notes
Photo by Bruno Bueno on Pexels.com

May I present to you: the humble sticky note.

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Article of Note: Employers’ Confidence in Higher Education Reflects Value of Vocational Exploration and Preparation

In December, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a report highlighting employer support for higher education’s role in preparing students for uncertain futures. The findings emphasize the importance of vocational exploration, informed citizenship, and community engagement, showcasing how colleges equip graduates with essential skills valued by employers.

In December, just as many of us were wrapping up courses and preparing for a much needed break, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a report—“The Agility Imperative: How Employers View Preparation for an Uncertain Future”—that should give many readers of this blog reason to feel confident about the vocational work we do to prepare students for their lives after college. In conversation with Inside Higher Ed, Ashley Finley, AAC&U’s vice president and report author, said that in contrast to the skepticism colleges and universities face from many Americans, “employers are higher education’s biggest fans. They value the ways in which colleges are preparing students to be nimble and agile for an uncertain future.”

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The Myth of the Linear Career

The post highlights the importance of guiding students in their career paths, emphasizing ongoing reflection and exploration instead of adhering to common, linear trajectories. It illustrates various career stages and encourages openness to non-linear paths, underscoring the fluidity of modern careers. Future posts will discuss the concept of “coddiwompling” as a purposeful journey.

When I ask former students who have recently graduated how they embarked on their current career path, the answers are often strikingly similar: “I’m not sure,” they often say, “it just happened.” They choose jobs because they are available and seem acceptable at the time. They sometimes also admit, “My parents told me this was a good field to work in.” As a result, these students have begun their professional lives in careers that lack purpose and fulfillment, yet they still expect upward mobility and ever-increasing success.

In my last post, I made a case for encouraging students to engage in deep vocational discernment and reflection as they embark on their careers, rather than succumbing to the most common paths students often take in this moment: accident or happenstance, apathy, and social pressure. To support this process, we need to encourage students to view vocational and career discernment as an ongoing, regular reflection and reassessment activity.

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