I’ve got a confession: When I applied for a NetVUE grant to embed vocational exploration in my organizational communication program, I did it partly because I knew I had what we in business call a “unique selling point.” Ever since being introduced to NetVUE, I’ve been reading its blog posts and listening to its podcast episodes, so I knew that my application would be considered alongside proposals for further integrating calling into English, philosophy, and theology programs. I was confident that NetVUE would be interested in bringing the language of calling into classrooms where it’s rarely, if ever, heard.
But that strategic thinking was not my only motivation. My study of organizational communication majors shows that students struggle with career transitions because they can’t connect professional preparation with individual purpose. My research on mid-career women reveals how a clash of personal and professional values lead to career disruptions—research with such a wide scope that it’s the foundation of my forthcoming book.
I know that underemphasizing vocation has serious consequences across the lifespan of work. But here’s what I didn’t know when I submitted my proposal: a serious case of imposter syndrome would follow.
The Paradox of the Unique Selling Point
The difference that made my application so compelling? It has also compelled me toward many sleepless nights.
I’m not religious.
I teach at a Catholic liberal arts institution but not in the liberal arts—I’m over in the business school.
My doctorate is in educational technology, not philosophy, and I spent a decade in industry before I went back to school to earn it.
And yet, despite—or perhaps because of?—all of this, I feel something pulling at me. I sense that this work matters in a transcendent way. I’m starting to believe that vocational discernment belongs in business education and we’re doing a disservice if we’re not integrating it.
Still, I wonder: Can I be called to work on calling when I don’t fit what I see as the traditional profile of someone who does this work?
The Hunger in the Room
Even as I might continue to struggle with this question, I keep experiencing moments that confirm this work’s urgency. Last semester, a marketing major stayed after my public relations class. We’d been discussing corporate social responsibility, and she asked a question that went beyond our case: “How do you know if a company actually means its mission?”
As we chatted, I realized that what she really wanted to know was how she could recognize authentic purpose. How could she build a meaningful career when performance matters more than substance?
I explained how she could analyze organizational rhetoric and diagnose value and practice misalignment. But what she needed—what my research tells me many of my students need—is language to examine her own sense of calling in the context of her career goals. She needed what I proposed to do through my grant application. Because I know that students hunger for vocational reflection, I feel empowered to resist my imposter syndrome and reminded to stay at it.
What Business Education Misses
At my university, my colleagues in the humanities do beautiful work that helps students explore questions of meaning and purpose. But I’ve seen that my business students often prioritize immediate career readiness over long-term vocational reflection. And I don’t blame them. As a first-generation student, I also didn’t think about “calling” after graduation, especially when I was desperate to escape a life in which I lived paycheck to paycheck.
Assumption’s business school is not unique—business curricula can easily default to technical competence and near-term employability. Employers’ expectations of “career readiness” may now include culturally-aware, purpose-driven leadership, yet we haven’t always kept pace with this evolution.
Still, make no mistake: Just as is the case in our college of liberal arts, there is gladness in our business school classrooms, and there is hunger right outside them, too.
The gap between what we teach and what students need for meaningful careers is an opportunity. Recognizing this gap has helped me see vocation’s profound relevance to my own discipline, which examines how culture and leadership are constituted through communication. When students learn to craft mission statements without asking what gives those words life; when they study leadership theory without audience awareness, personal investment, and identity rehearsal; when they prepare for careers without connecting professional success with personal purpose—are they truly prepared for their careers and their lives after graduation?
I work alongside business school colleagues who are called to this work. They stay late to talk with students about more than just coursework and mentor with genuine investment in students’ full humanity. They model ethical practice even when they face pressures to measure success by utilitarian and individualistic standards. They just don’t use the language of vocation to describe it. But I believe our students need them to do so.
My Challenge and My Hope
As I reflect, I find that my greatest challenge is also what I hope for most. My challenge is to help each student realize that they don’t have to be religious, identify as an English major, or like to read Kant to be called. My hope is that they will pursue careers in business and at the same time find “the place where their deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
We need this. Consider Mark Zuckerberg, who speaks of connecting the world while Meta’s platforms amplify misinformation and harm vulnerable populations; or Sam Altman, who taps into the language of the common good while racing to develop artificial intelligence with consequences we barely understand. These gaps between rhetoric and reality vividly illustrate what happens when business leaders learn to speak about purpose without learning to live it.
These gaps between rhetoric and reality vividly illustrate what happens when business leaders learn to speak about purpose without learning to live it.
I know that we can be in business and be other-centered, too. I believe my students can learn to recognize when communication reflects genuine organizational values versus merely performing them. They can develop the critical capacity—and most importantly, the confidence!—to speak up when mission and practice are out of alignment. They can build careers that genuinely serve others rather than just extract individual rewards.
What I’m Learning from Reflecting
This summer, I will begin my project in earnest. I’ll start developing modules, reviewing literature, and designing workshops. My own reflective process, however, is already well underway. Before I ask students to examine their relationship with vocation, I need to further examine my own. I need to reflect before I assign reflection.
So far, my reflections have helped me see that the imposter syndrome I’ve experienced as I’ve begun this work has its own value. My own questions about vocation and what it means to invite students into conversations about calling are why I am particularly able to guide them through its ambiguity. My awareness of not fitting a traditional mold positions me to recognize students who also feel out of place in discussions of purpose. My own background uniquely empowers me to translate vocational language for students seeking meaning beyond metrics.
I do still find myself asking: Who can confidently claim that fulfillment can be found in studying organizational culture or designing communication that shapes how people feel, think, and act? Who can affirm that these paths respond to the world’s deep hunger for connection and dignity? But I’m also increasingly answering these questions with stronger conviction: I can. I don’t need to escape uncertainty to lead students in conversations about calling; I just need to learn to embrace this uncertainty and teach from it.
Laura Nicole Miller is assistant professor of organizational communication in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches courses on leadership, workplace communication, and organizational culture. Her research explores vocational identity, career readiness, and organizational communication across the professional lifespan. She is currently writing Keeping Women: Communication, Culture, and the Mid-Career Crisis, a book that reframes mid-career women’s workforce attrition as a systemic communication failure rather than an individual shortcoming. Laura is a recipient of a 2026 NetVUE Grant to Individuals for Vocational Exploration and holds a doctorate in educational technology. Her scholarship has been published in The CASE Journal, International Journal of Business Communication, and Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, among other publications.