The post discusses the significance of supporting students’ understanding of their sexualities beyond traditional frameworks, emphasizing sexual configurations theory (SCT). SCT, developed by Sari van Anders, encourages deeper reflection on sexual identities, acknowledging diverse lived experiences and the interplay of various identities. This approach fosters authentic self-discovery and meaningful relationships in the context of vocational exploration and discernment.
In my first job after graduate school as a visiting professor, I did not advise students officially, but happily mentored many of them. Because I was both out as a queer person—genderqueer lesbian at the time—and open about my own struggles as a first-generation college student, students often shared with me their own identities, questions, challenges, and longings. One day over lunch at a language-immersion table, a student told me that she was having a really hard time. She had long known that she was queer and recently had experienced her first relationship with a woman. Their time together was short-lived—the partner had graduated early and moved away—and the student didn’t feel like it was a serious relationship. She judged herself for the intensity of her feelings about it and its end. I listened, thanked her for sharing with me, and reminded her that relationships don’t need to be serious to be important.
NetVUE’s conversation cards aid vocational exploration with three inquiry-focused decks: explore, engage, and envision. NetVUE’s February webinar showcased various applications of these cards for students and faculty by speakers from different institutions, emphasizing community building, faculty development, and cultural context in vocation exploration.
NetVUE’s conversation cards are one of the latest tools aimed at supporting our students’ vocational exploration and discernment. There will be three decks focused on distinct kinds of inquiry—Explore, Engage, and Envision—with the first two decks already available, and the third set to be released in March. In addition, a Spanish language deck that focuses on more culturally situated aspects of vocation is being developed. Each of the decks features questions for students at all levels of vocational inquiry, from first-year icebreakers to senior-year capstones.
NetVUE’s most recent webinar focused on various ways to use this resource with students, as well as with staff and faculty. On February 3, the webinar’s featured speakers discussed their experiences with and strategies for making the most out of the first deck (Explore) to enhance vocation programming on their campuses.
Webinar speakers MT Dávila (top left), Jennifer Ferguson (top right), Monique Jiménez-Herrera (bottom left), and Peter Carlson Schattauer (bottom right).
Professor Caryn Riswold discusses her work and insights on NetVUE’s podcast Callings. She emphasizes the importance of social justice, identity, and culture in vocational exploration and discernment. Riswold urges listeners to ask ask meaningful questions as a means to foster human connection and empower others in their vocational journeys.
The term “voxistential” blends “existential” with “vocation,” highlighting the need for meaning-making in life. It critiques the oversimplification of both concepts in popular culture and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the dark sides of calling, exploring the interplay of hardship and authenticity within vocational reflection, as discussed by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.
Yes, I’m trying to coin a new word. Googling “voxistential” will only take you to definitions of “existential” and maybe to a 2019 article from the magazine Vox about whether climate change is an existential threat. But I’m taking a cue from my oldest son who made up the word “crenescence” a couple years ago and used it casually around the high school lunch table just to see if it would catch on. (The word allegedly meant something like the opposite of irony, but not quite the same as coincidence. And no, it never caught on.)
By “voxistential” I mean to bring together “existential” and “vocation,” from vocare, “to call,” and the Latin root vōx, meaning “voice.” Traditionally, both words point to a similar idea—namely, that a person needs to find or make meaning and purpose, especially when life doesn’t hand them ready-made answers or pre-cut patterns. The meanings of the words have drifted apart in recent years, perhaps because we have overused each one. Recently, though, wise scholars like Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, author of Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, are reviving existential questions within vocational reflection.
The content discusses the significance of narratives, both real and fictional, in vocational exploration and ethics. It highlights Steven Mintz’s insights on how storytelling can aid understanding and engagement in education, illustrating its practical use through ancient Greek dramas that address modern conflicts. Narratives help students navigate their vocational journeys.
Those of us who dwell in the land of vocational exploration and discernment have often been reminded of the power of narratives in supporting this work. The narratives that we employ are often real-life stories: now-famous folks whose lives began in unpromising ways, people whose winding paths eventually pointed them in a particular direction, or elders and mentors who told us of their own journeys. The field of ethics, too, has often relied on these narratives to provide examples of lives of character and virtue. But I have always believed that fictional narratives can be just as useful and important as those that come from real-life features and (auto)biographies. In fact, fiction has a couple of advantages over non-fiction in this regard.
This content explores the relationship between vocation and rhetoric, emphasizing the importance of logos in vocational reasoning. It discusses how educators can use critical thinking to guide students towards ethical decision-making and align their career aspirations with communal values, ultimately inspiring them to become agents of positive change.
A series of posts on the relationship between vocation and rhetoric, focusing on how ethos, logos, pathos, and mythos offer a fresh perspective for creatives, educators, and scholars to conceptualize their professional and personal callings.
As one of the three classical rhetorical appeals, logos often takes a backseat to ethos and pathos in discussions of vocation, but it is no less critical in shaping how we understand and teach vocational exploration and discernment. Logos refers not only to the logical structure of an argument; it also represents the reasoning that underpins our actions, the ethical implications embedded within that reasoning, and the ways we encourage others to think critically about the world. In vocational exploration, logos plays a distinctive role as the intellectual backbone that helps us discern our callings and align them with both reason and purpose.
Rhetorician Edwin Black offers a useful framework to understand how persuasive discourse creates identities and worldviews. In his 1970 landmark essay, “The Second Persona,” he argues that a rhetor’s discourse appeals to an ideal audience—one that embodies the values, beliefs, and habits conveyed through the discourse itself. For Black, logos’s appeal draws on more than the intrinsic logic of its arguments; it constructs a particular kind of reasoning that shapes how people think, act, and engage with the world.
Edwin Black, copyright University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.
As part of my dissertation research, I used Black’s second persona theory to analyze Joel Osteen’s discourse and examined hundreds of his sermons and books, interviews with him spanning decades, and his extensive social media presence. Through this lens, I identified the characteristics of the “ideal” audience Osteen envisions—individuals whose consciousness centers on wealth, health, and relationships. Osteen’s rhetoric constructs a worldview that prioritizes personal success in these areas while deliberately avoiding engagement with racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter or diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within higher education—a tension that both readers and writers of this blog care about in terms of its impact on vocation.
Reflecting on this analysis, I am struck by Black’s insight that the rhetorical dimensions of an argument can actually produce an audience—shaping not only identities but also actions. This principle resonates in the classroom, where the logos of my teaching inevitably influences the type of people my students become. The reasoning I present in my courses—whether through discussions of ethical communication or explorations of social justice—serves as a model for how students might engage with the world. In this way, appeals to logos help us do more than just craft compelling arguments; logos allows us to construct and use reasoning that aligns with communal values and inspires action.
For educators, the challenge lies in examining how our appeals to logos—and our systems and frameworks for reasoning—shape the way students think about vocation. Are we teaching them to prioritize personal gain, or are we guiding them to consider how their skills and knowledge can serve others? I often open class discussions by posing questions that encourage self-reflection: “What logic drives your decisions? Is it rooted in love, compassion, and justice, or does it reflect the values of a society that often prioritizes material success over the well-being of others?” These conversations help students explore the reasoning behind their aspirations and consider how their vocational goals align with a broader sense of purpose.
When I think about my role as an educator within the classroom, I consider how the logic I present shapes my students’ vocational journeys. In my public speaking course, for instance, I encourage students to think critically about the arguments they construct and the reasoning that drives their presentations. I ask them to engage with real-world issues, such as climate change or income inequality, and to develop speeches that not only inform but also propose actionable solutions. These assignments challenge students to connect the logic of their ethical reasoning to their emerging vocations, asking them, “What kind of impact do you want your words and actions to have on the world?”
In my public relations courses, I guide students through campaigns where logos becomes the foundation of their strategies. I often task them with designing a public awareness campaign for a nonprofit organization. This requires them to research the issue, analyze the needs of their audience, and craft a clear, compelling argument that inspires action. For example, one group designed a campaign for a local food bank, combining statistics about food insecurity with emotionally resonant stories from community members. This exercise teaches students that logos is not merely about data or facts, but involves constructing a coherent and ethical argument that responds to the world’s hunger and aligns with their values and contributes to the common good.
Students also benefit from exercises that explicitly connect logos to vocation. In one activity, I ask my students to write a “vocational argument,” where they articulate their career goals and the reasoning behind them. I require them to identify the values that underpin their aspirations and explain how their chosen path contributes to the common good. One student, for example, shared that her experiences volunteering at a domestic violence shelter inspired her to pursue a career in law. Her argument was grounded in a clear and logical connection between her empathy, values, and advocacy—her sense of justice—and her vocational goals. This kind of exercise not only sharpens students’ reasoning skills but also deepens their understanding of how logos can guide their decision-making.
As educators, we also have a responsibility to model logos in our own vocational practices. The logic of our teaching—that is, the arguments we make, the reasoning we employ, and the values we prioritize—shapes the kinds of vocations our students pursue. I often reflect on the metaphor of the shepherd, guiding those who follow. Just as a shepherd’s actions determine the path of the flock, our logos has a profound impact on the ethical and intellectual paths our students take. This awareness reminds me to approach my teaching with intentionality, ensuring that the reasoning I present is aligned with an ethos of love and transformation.
When combined with ethos, logos has the power to create a profound and lasting impact. While ethos represents the character and credibility of the speaker—what we might think of as vocational identity—logos provides the framework that allows us to articulate our values and translate them into action—or our vocational pursuits. Together, these appeals form the foundation of our vocational work, shaping not only what we teach but also how we teach it.
In my experience, fostering a strong sense of logos in the classroom means encouraging students to think critically about the reasoning that drives their decisions and to align that reasoning with their values. It also means providing opportunities for students to connect their logic to real-world applications, whether through speeches, campaigns, or reflective writing. By doing so, we equip them to navigate the complexities of the modern world with clarity, purpose, and integrity.
Ultimately, logos not only involves the arguments we make; it also represents values and assumptions that underpin those arguments and the kind of individuals they inspire. Our vocational journeys as educators require us to do more than transmit knowledge; we also shape the reasoning and values of those we teach. By aligning our logos with an ethos of love and justice, we can guide our students toward becoming thoughtful, ethical agents of positive change in a world that desperately needs them.
Reginald Bell, Jr., is an assistant professor of strategic communication and public relations at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. A third-generation clergyman, he was honored and humbled to deliver a TED Talk at Knox College in March 2024 titled “The Money is in the Hogs.” He first learned about NetVUE after attending seminars on vocation on his campus in 2024. For other posts by Reginald, click here.
The post reflects on the importance of reimagining general education as a way to foster vocational discernment in an increasingly job-focused educational environment, advocating for its transformative potential throughout students’ academic journeys. The author shares insights into a new first-year seminar that connects a more common focus on vocational exploration to more specialized content.
For almost two decades, I taught a course called Created and Called for Community (CCC for short), a common learning course at Messiah University designed for first-year students to explore identity, community, and calling. Despite my ardent enthusiasm for it, I entered my first day of class each spring with trepidation as I anticipated student resistance. “Why do I have to take this course?” they often asked, expressing anything from curiosity to confusion to adamant frustration—as in, “I should not have to take this course.”
On many levels, I understood their resistance. Students experience ever increasing pressure from all directions—parents, peers, and culture—to focus their educational energies narrowly on preparation for lucrative employment. “Return on investment” is such a dominant evaluative frame for a college education’s value that general education courses are often considered something to “get out of the way,” something in which students see no reason to invest their intellectual or financial resources.
