Faculty and staff members can play an important role in facilitating networking opportunities that encourage our students to explore who they want to be in the world.
When I have thought of the word “networking,” I have imagined lawyers in New York City drinking martinis after work or corporate business men playing a round of golf on the weekend, closing business deals. Based on who I am and what I value, networking absolutely did not seem to be for me. Yet this perception has been narrow: it limited networking to transactional interactions that benefit the few who fit the mold and exclude others with less power and access. Recently, I have reconsidered my understanding of the value of networking and how it can relate to broader aspects of our students’ vocational journeys beyond careers. Faculty and staff members can play an important role in facilitating networking opportunities that encourage our students to explore who they want to be in the world.
The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, associate professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University.
The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University. He is also a NetVUE faculty fellow and NetVUE scholar and has written extensively on the topic of supporting LGBTQIA+ students in their vocational journeys. In addition to serving as one of the faculty advisors for the Queer Student Alliance at Regis, he also leads Brave Space Trainings for the Queer Resource Alliance. His recent scholarship includes the essays “Queer Vocation and the Uncommon Good” in Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good and “Queer Callings: LGBTQ Literature and Vocation” in Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies.
How might my teaching change if I acknowledged that developing a capacity for friendship is a fundamental component of the overall process of learning?
This spring, I took a class on a field trip to the main campus of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, a community of Catholic women whose charism includes a call to live sustainably and work for environmental justice. Some of our course texts highlighted the natural world as an emerging source of spirituality among nonreligious young people in the US, and I wanted students to see that many traditional religious communities find God in nature, too. The question was how today’s “nones” might resonate with, well, nuns.
On a beautiful Saturday in April, we walked the immense campus and heard the Sisters’ attention to the land is rooted in their love of God and all that belongs to God. The following Tuesday, I asked the students what they had learned on the trip. My focus on course content had me looking for evidence of learning in conceptual connections, so when students’ initial responses provided such evidence, I thought “great, objective achieved.” But then someone offered a different sort of comment: “What I really liked is that we were outside walking and talking with each other. I feel like I got to know people. Obviously I’ve seen you guys all semester, but I hadn’t really seen you. Just being together like that is what will stick with me. I learned I should do it more.”
Genuine human connection: another objective achieved! Yet it hadn’t been an explicit objective because, to be honest, the weight I give to conceptual learning often relegates connection and friendship to the periphery. When it happens, wonderful, but it’s not really the goal. How might my teaching change if I acknowledged that developing a capacity for friendship is a fundamental component of the overall process of learning?
