You Can’t Hack Your Higher Purpose: Restoring Faith in Vocation in the Age of AI

an artificial intelligence illustration on the wall

Increasingly, college students are outsourcing their schoolwork to artificial intelligence. This development is troubling for college educators everywhere, but especially for those of us working at church-related liberal arts institutions. Many of us believe that higher order thinking is not merely a marker of our humanity but the mark of our Maker. We hold that reasoning, like loving, is something God made us to do. We reason to learn the truths of Creation and to see ourselves as beings created in the divine image. When we ponder mysteries and solve problems, we act in accordance with our higher purpose. Conversely, when we too readily substitute artificial intelligence for our own, we compromise our callings. Generative AI can aggregate information, but it can tell us nothing about our souls. As philosopher Lily Abadal points out, only you can search your heart. Indeed, as the Catholic Church’s recent doctrinal note reiterates, what distinguishes human intelligence from AI is “the person’s openness to the ultimate questions of life.”

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NetVUE at AAC&U: Advancing Public Purpose through Vocational Exploration

In January, a panel from NetVUE presented at the AAC&U Annual Meeting, focusing on higher education’s public purposes and vocational discernment. Panelists discussed integrating civic engagement, arts accessibility, and career development into education, emphasizing the need for collaboration and purpose in student experiences. The session highlighted both challenges and strategies for fostering student flourishing.

This January, I led a team of five colleagues affiliated with NetVUE who presented at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Annual Meeting: Answering the Call for Constructive Engagement. One of the meeting’s tracks was “Advancing Public Purpose,” providing attendees the chance to explore many related questions: how we define the public purposes of higher education, how we think about telling and retelling our stories, and how a sense of purpose informs our leadership. There were also opportunities to learn more about anchoring purpose in various undergraduate experiences, including liberal arts pathways, civic engagement, research, project-based learning, and career and professional opportunities. Our NetVUE panelists shared concrete strategies for incorporating vocational exploration into undergraduate education by attending to career development and preparation, civic learning, community engagement, student well-being, and purposeful pathways.

Presenters included (left to right): Sheila Bauer-Gatsos, Michelle Hayford, Kamara Jackson, Terese Lund, Richard Sévère, and Darby Ray.
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Fostering Belonging through Community-Driven Theatre

The article explores the importance of theatre in fostering community, belonging, and vocational exploration. It advocates for theatre programs to focus on community needs through productions and projects that engage local issues. This approach not only enhances belonging among students but underscores theatre’s role as a vital community resource.

A series on the role of theatre in vocation, with a focus on how it supports community-building, the uncommon good, and vocational exploration and discernment for all our students.

Lights up on STUDENT after campus workshop using theatre to address a community need.

audience member attentively watching a presentation
Photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels.com

STUDENT

I didn’t know I could do this with theatre.

Enter AUDIENCE MEMBER who just saw a production created from the workshop.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I don’t see a lot of theatre, but the topic brought me here. . . I learned stuff I had no idea about and I’m now asking what can I do.

Lights fade.

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Vocation and Pedagogy I: Viewing Our Students with Hope

This post initiates a series on the interplay between vocation and pedagogy, highlighting the significance of hope in the classroom. It emphasizes student engagement and the necessity of viewing learners as valuable individuals. By implementing Universal Design for Learning, educators can create inclusive environments that foster vocational conversations and support students’ unique experiences and aspirations.

The first post in a series exploring the connections between vocation and pedagogy.

“What conversations about meaning and purpose do you wish we were having in the classroom?” I asked a group of my senior students and then held my breath. When I first began thinking about vocation, I felt overwhelmed by both the possibilities and the challenges of integrating it intentionally into my teaching. To help me do so, I invited my students to help me understand what they needed so that we could imagine what was possible. They were eager to engage, and their ideas jumped quickly among three elements: the content of the conversations, the possible structures for activities, and the culture of the classroom. As my students shared their thoughts, they connected content and pedagogy in ways that encouraged me to think more carefully about designing possible activities to give shape to and reinforce the unfolding conversation. It was the beginning of my learning journey, which has led to many interesting observations of the reciprocal relationship between vocational exploration with students and general pedagogy.

In this first post, I want to consider vocational and pedagogical hope in the classroom. Students are shaped by the hopes we hold for them and the value we see in them. Engaging vocation invites us to see our students not merely as the receivers of learning but as people whose experiences, skills, and passions have value. It challenges us to consider how our interactions contribute to their discernment and flourishing. To view students vocationally is to embody hope for them, as Paul Wadell so aptly describes. We cannot think vocationally without hope, and the learning spaces we create contribute to communicating that hope to our students.

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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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