With this post on Vocation Matters, I’m announcing a transition in the editorial responsibilities for NetVUE’s blog. Thanks to the dedicated work of Hannah Schell, its first editor, and to Stephanie Johnson, who has overseen the blog for the past two years, this experimental vehicle—once a small sideline within one of NetVUE’s programs—has matured into an important resource for our member institutions and beyond. It offers outstanding online writing at a level of depth and breadth that couldn’t have been imagined when it was launched some eight years ago. The blog is visited weekly by people around the world, including 147 different countries and territories in addition to the United States; it is now visited some 20,000 times each year.
Blog editor Stephanie Johnson is now moving into a new role as dean of the College of Liberal Studies at Pacific Lutheran University (a NetVUE member, of course!), where she will have many new and pressing obligations. She let me know a few months ago that she would need to step down as the editor of the blog. Please join me in thanking her for all she’s done to make this part of NetVUE such a vibrant and enriching space.
I’m extremely pleased to announce that the new editor of Vocation Matters is Geoffrey Bateman, who serves as professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Geoffrey has been active in NetVUE since 2017, when he was a member of the very first NetVUE faculty development seminar. Since that time, he has visited a number of NetVUE campuses, spoken to groups large and small, and generally immersed himself in the life of the network. He is one of the twelve contributors to the most recent volume from the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project.
I’ve asked Geoffrey to introduce himself to you. I think you’ll see, in reading the next several paragraphs, just how well he fits into this new role. Welcome, Geoffrey—you can take it from here!
If you attended the most recent national NetVUE conference, you might have seen a button worn by many of us that read, “Vocation is My Vocation.” I’m confident that I am not the only person involved in NetVUE to have thought and even expressed such sentiments, but when I spoke them at a regional gathering at St. Norbert’s College in 2022, NetVUE’s executive director, David Cunningham’s ears perked up and—savvy vocation promoter that he is—he turned these words into an appealing bit of conference swag that reflects many of our commitments to vocational exploration and discernment in our professional and personal lives.
These words very much reflect my own evolving sense of purpose—as a teacher, scholar, advisor, administrator, and now editor of Vocation Matters. As I transition into my new role with NetVUE, I share my own sense of evolving purpose to illustrate my enthusiasm and commitment to the deep joy and satisfaction that comes from our shared work on supporting undergraduate students in their pursuit of purpose and meaning. NetVUE’s blog has played an important role in providing all of us with a virtual community of thought and practice, and I am thrilled to work with you all to develop further the kinds of resources that support and guide us as educators who believe in vocation.
First, though, I want to express my deep gratitude to Stephanie Johnson, for her vision and leadership over the past two years on all matters blog-related, as well as her keen editorial eye. Any writer who has ever worked with her knows her talent and generosity as an editor. In her role, she challenged us all to express our thinking in the clearest of ways, enriching our community with her vision and tireless attention to detail.
One of my goals is to continue to foster and support the kind of writing that have made this space so generative for so many of us. As I look ahead to the near future, I anticipate soliciting posts that represent a wide range of perspectives on all matters related to vocation, attending to the current questions and debates that occupy us. As well, I aspire to highlight and share with you all other resources that might open up new ways of thinking about, teaching, advising, or practicing vocational exploration in all of our lives, but especially with a care for those undergraduates with whom we work and whose lives we seek to influence.
A little bit more about me: as an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher whose formal disciplinary training includes a PhD in English, I have worked both as a professional writer and editor in a number of contexts. As an editor, I do my best to balance the needs of writers and readers. I strive to support writers in their quest to express their ideas and experiences in ways that are meaningful to them, and also to keep readers’ needs in mind so that we present the clearest of prose in ways that are appropriate for the situation. I’ve taught writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as supporting writers in writing centers on university campuses and in the community. Generating community through writing has been a significant part of my life’s work, and I am eager to continue it as editor of this blog.
As David notes above, I work at Regis University in Denver, where I have taught courses for twelve years on a range of social justice issues, including queer vocations, sexual citizenship, nonviolent resistance, gender and homelessness, and research and writing in the community. From 2017 to 2022, I also served as an associate dean in our college of liberal arts, overseeing student support, experiential learning, and academic advising. Last fall, I returned to teaching full time, eager to redirect my attention to the classroom. As editor, I bring a range of experiences working with students and hope all of them will provide me with the necessary perspectives to foster a rich and far-ranging dialogue in this space.
I have been honored to have been involved with NetVUE since 2017, when I participated in the inaugural NetVUE faculty seminar on Teaching Vocational Exploration. To say that this experience transformed my own sense of calling is an understatement. The week I spent with my cohort—a generous, smart, and talented group of colleagues, I have to say—powerfully shifted my own vocational path. It transformed my approach to teaching and also encouraged me to explore taking a more active role in administrative leadership. As an associate dean, I integrated insights and practices gleaned from NetVUE into the programs I oversaw. Not only did vocational exploration and discernment often help struggling students better understand their own motivation and develop self-regulation skills, it also helped me supervise and support the staff I worked with. Using vocation across all the facets of my work in higher education has become one of the most satisfying parts of my own vocation.
My experience as a NetVUE Fellow also shaped my scholarship, prompting me to begin writing and publishing on vocation. In 2022, my essay “Queer Callings: LGBTQ Literature and Vocation” appeared in Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies (Edinburgh, 2022). Subsequently, I was invited to participate in the fourth volume of the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project, Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good (Oxford, 2024).
Writing these essays has convinced me that as educators we must continue to make accessible the traditions, practices, and resources that comprise NetVUE’s collective work to everyone, especially those faculty, students, and staff who have been historically marginalized or underserved by higher education. My essay in Called Beyond Ourselves, “Queer Vocation and the Common Good,” seeks to foster in one small way this kind of transformative approach to our work, as have my previous posts to this blog. As a peace and justice studies scholar, I am also interested in all the ways that vocation emerges out of and through conflict, both big and small.
As the editor of Vocation Matters, I am especially interested in building on these kinds of conversations about access and equity for multiple communities, as well as supporting the exploration of a range of other interests. Although my own work focuses on questions of gender identity and sexual orientation, I don’t expect these issues to become a major focus of the blog. I’m also sensitive to our blog’s readership, which represents a range of views on these topics, so I want to emphasize that that we will continue to welcome blog posts and comments from a variety of perspectives. Ultimately, I hope Vocation Matters will continue to foreground both timely contributions to the content of our field and practical reflections on our teaching, advising, and other ways we mentor students vocationally, as well using this platform to respond to the historic shifts in higher education’s vocation that we are all experiencing.
I hope you’ll join me by continuing to read this blog, share its insights with your friends and colleagues, and if so moved, consider writing for us. As editor, I will always be curious to cultivate new perspectives and want to know what you, as readers, want to see on our pages.
