Month: April 2025

Mythos and Vocation: A Journey of Narrative and Purpose

The post discusses the interplay between vocation and mythos, exploring how personal and cultural narratives shape individual identity and calling. It advocates for a critical examination of inherited stories, encouraging reflection and rewriting as means to align one’s life with values of love and justice. Mythos serves as a guiding framework for vocational discernment.

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.

Reginald Bell, Jr.

In rhetorical terms, mythos refers to the stories that shape how we understand who we are, where we come from, and what we are called to become; these stories center the deeper cultural and spiritual narratives that frame both individual identity and collective belonging. The roots of mythos lie in the Sophist tradition of pre-Aristotelian rhetoric, in which storytelling was seen not just as persuasion, but as a means of conveying truths about the human condition. Not only a rhetorical appeal, mythos is also a way of being—helping us locate ourselves within larger moral, communal, and historical arcs.

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Happy Global Academic Advising Week: Let’s Celebrate and Integrate Vocation

Global Advising Week celebrates NACADA’s role in enhancing student success through academic advising. As advisors create inclusive environments for students to explore their educational and vocational goals, they can also address barriers to engagement. Intentional integration of vocation in advising empowers all students, fostering reflection and collaboration to enrich their academic journeys.

This week higher education celebrates Global Advising Week from April 27 – May 3, in recognition of the formation of NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. Formally chartered on May 2, 1979, NACADA exists to advance student success through academic advising in higher education. Since NACADA’s inception, academic advisors have created inclusive spaces for students to discuss their holistic goals and educational purposes.

Now a global professional community of practice, NACADA leaders ground advising in key competencies, shared values, standards of practice, and a teaching mindset that unites the field. Whether they serve as faculty advisors, full-time primary-role advisors, or champions of the cause, NetVUE members should celebrate advising this week—for all the ways that it provides unique opportunities to deepen students’ vocational learning.

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The Vocation of Citizenship for the Common Good

The NetVUE webinar on March 25 focused on the vocation of citizenship, urging community engagement for the common good. Speakers Michelle Hayford, Christine Jeske, and Meghan Slining discussed advocacy, mutuality, and compassionate pedagogy, respectively. The session included participant questions and shared additional resources for further exploration of these themes.

The vocation of citizenship encourages individuals to engage actively in their communities, prioritizing the well-being of the collective. By addressing shared challenges, citizens contribute to the common good and help shape a more sustainable future. On March 25, NetVUE hosted a webinar that focused on various ways to explore this topic with students, as well as staff and faculty. In it, the featured speakers discussed their experiences and their recent contributions to  Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good.

Michelle Hayford (left), Christine Jeske (center), and Meghan Slining (right).
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Death and Taxes and a Meaningful Life

The certainty of death and taxes, famously noted by Benjamin Franklin, is challenged by modern realities. Wealth disparities skew tax compliance, while transhumanists envision overcoming mortality. Authors Burkeman and Beal argue that confronting our finitude enriches lives. Ultimately, recognizing life’s limits prompts meaningful existence and societal responsibility.

a close up shot of dollar bills
Photo by JustStartInvesting on Pexels.com

Nothing is certain except for death and taxes.

When Benjamin Franklin popularized this saying in 1789, he was referring to the new American Constitution, which he believed shouldn’t be considered certain or permanent, at least not without the active participation and vigilance of its citizens—a republic, he suggested, if we can keep it. Absolutely nothing is certain—not even the bedrock of our nation’s democracy—except for death and taxes.

And maybe not even those.

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“A Mission from God” versus Kierkegaard’s “Infinite Why”

The piece discusses the concerns of independent colleges regarding the new administration’s impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). It critiques political leaders’ claims of divine sanction for their actions, drawing on Kierkegaard’s existentialist views which emphasize ambiguity in calling. The author advocates for humility and reflection in understanding vocation.

There are a number of reasons why those of us who educate for vocation at independent colleges and universities are acutely concerned about the start of the new administration. First and foremost, attacks on DEI are rattling those committed to making college education and purposeful work available to all. While private institutions arguably have more protection than public ones, they’re not immune from federal attacks or statewide measures that follow. The slipshod firing of federal workers also sends shivers among public servants, many of whom chose governmental work out of a sense of calling; that is, because they “want to serve the public” and are “motivated by their desire to make the world a better place.”

Equally troubling is the fact that so many government officials have ordained their own work in terms of a higher calling, or a mission sent by God, even as they disrupt the more modest callings of others. At both the state and federal levels, politicians have repeatedly interpreted their electoral victories (many of which have been quite narrow) as a clear mandate to slash jobs, overhaul governmental bureaucracy, and attack higher education. We should be skeptical about declarations that elected (or unelected) officials have been “saved by God” or are doing “God’s work.” Even without explicit self-ordinations, we should be critical—and resistant—anytime a leader or party enacts “creative destruction” with all the certainty, zeal, and sanction of the God-Chosen.

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Privilege, Justice, and Religious Freedom

David S. Cunningham examines the tension between public and private higher education institutions in the context of state and federal legislative control. He argues that while private institutions may face less direct oversight, federal grants present significant risks. Religiously affiliated schools may navigate these challenges differently, emphasizing their commitment to social justice and religious freedom.

David S. Cunningham

As certain core commitments of higher education have come under attack in recent years, I have been paying attention to the potential differences between the public and private spheres. Public institutions in states like Florida and Texas may have little choice but to surrender to the will of the state legislature, which sets budgets and has the power to dictate many of the details as to how its state institutions are run. Legislative control of private institutions is less obvious, but it can still happen—whether directly (as in states like Iowa, which control scholarship programs that can be used at the state’s private institutions) or indirectly (wherein private institutions can be shut out of certain corridors of power if they are seen as unfriendly to a state’s government).

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