At the 2026 NetVUE Conference this past March, I couldn’t stop thinking about how to meet learning outcomes while at the same time cherishing students and lingering with them along their educational journeys. At the post-keynote roundtable discussions, faculty colleagues shared how they do so: Some are more lenient with grades early in the semester to boost feelings of self-efficacy, while others are less lenient to help students realize they’re still worthy of being cherished even in moments when their effort isn’t their best.
This discussion reminded me that we share similar goals but have strikingly different ways to work toward them. Yet we all think about this in terms of giving letter grades.
I thought I might be sensitive to this because I’m in my first semester of a new grading scheme after participating in an alternative grading institute over winter break. Traditional grading has long felt inconsistent with how I show up in the classroom and in one-on-one conversations with students. I sought an alternative because I wanted to be authentic and hold consistent expectations. I’ve since dropped the exams and quizzes that felt incongruent with who I am as a teacher and created a structure centered on choice and persistence for my undergraduate courses.
My conference conversations led me to realize that this approach is a natural companion to an emphasis on vocation in that both require flexibility, self-awareness, and an outward orientation.
Calling and Alternative Grading
My own mid-career disruption led me to more meaningful work, which I write about to show others that they are not alone. That more meaningful work quickly connected me to my university’s Center for Purpose and Vocation, where I found words for what I sought and resources to help my students find their own versions of meaning, too. One such resource is Living Vocationally: The Journey of a Called Life. In it, Paul Wadell and Charles Pinches lay out how to translate a belief in calling into action, and in doing so, they offer a discussion that resonates with the core components of alternative grading.
Callings require flexibility—so does alternative grading
In Living Vocationally, Wadell and Pinches recast callings as mysteries “that we grow into” and that necessarily evolve along with the development of our senses of who we are and how we relate to our loved ones, neighbors, and even strangers.
Such flexibility is a core component of alternative grading, too. Traditional grading includes many make-or-break moments, like high-stakes exams that a student can’t afford to fail, or an expectation of 100% consistency across submissions (which doesn’t allow for life to sometimes get in the way of school). Alternative grading frees students and professors from these bounds. No matter which alternative approach is chosen, early performance—especially that which is less than “successful”—becomes less an irrecoverable moment of consequence and more a gentle nudge to get back on track.
In guiding my students through vocational discernment, I’m also asking them to be more flexible with themselves and with their lives as they unfold. I want them to understand that the question “what do you want to do when you graduate?” is not as clear-cut as they’ve been brought up to expect. So it feels natural that flexibility should also be baked into the assignments they undertake with me across the semester.
Callings require self-awareness—so does alternative grading
To be called is to know who and where you are. It requires, according to Wadell and Pinches, an understanding of our limitations, our wounds, and the ways our temperament and history shape what we can truly offer.
When it comes to grading, that means students—not professors—must make choices based on what is best for them. This agency is the only way they can understand how their performance relates to them as individuals, not to their professors as individuals.
The problem with the traditional grades-as-punishment approach is that, try as we might, students still don’t see it as “earning” a grade—they see it as a professor “giving” one. With alternative grading, I’m finding that students more clearly connect their individual outcomes to their individual efforts. More importantly, they maneuver around their unique challenges and lean into their strengths as they actively plan how they’ll meet our learning outcomes.
Callings require outward orientation—so does alternative grading
Finally, callings require understanding where we are needed, not just where we want to be. The “world’s deep hunger” matters as much as, if not more than, where your “deep gladness” lies. Wadell and Pinches lay out what happens when we lack this outward orientation: when discernment only turns inward to discover what we want, never outward to consider how we might address the world’s pain and brokenness—this kind of discernment will increase injustice rather than stem it.
In a traditional grading scheme, students are tempted to game the system and aim for the least effort while earning the most points. I’m not judging this temptation. Our students are busy and they’re smart; they know that time spent on one task is time they can’t spend on another. This lesson is one that we, as the adults in their lives, should take from them, especially as we each decide what to do with—to quote Mary Oliver—our “one wild and precious life.” An efficiency-focused approach leads to conversations about extensions and negotiations about extra credit—and time spent in these conversations is time we can’t spend on our content or on the more important lessons we want students to take away.
Alternative grading helps address this problem. It’s less about an individual student finding loopholes and more about an individual student choosing between options. This kind of learning-outcomes-focused system is more fair and just—not perfectly so, but at least more so. It’s less about flexibility or grace that a student needs me to give and more about how a student can respond to the thoughtful system in place.
Our Alternative
I believe, as I’ve written in a previous post, that centering vocation and purpose is key to developing the future leaders that we feel called to develop. What I’ve realized from the NetVUE Conference is that this centering needs to happen on both a macro and micro level. Vocation—and the values it requires—must be integrated as much into our day-to-day class structures as into our overall teaching philosophies.
Vocation—and the values it requires—must be integrated as much into our day-to-day class structures as into our overall teaching philosophies.
If we want students to accept that living a good life requires flexibility, self-awareness, and outward orientation, then we need to integrate flexibility, self-awareness, and outward orientation into everything we do. And grading, as we all know, ends up being a large part of everything we do.
Given the complicated world that students face, they are often cast as less concerned with grand ideals (curiosity, beauty, truth, and the common good) and more focused on the practical: What skills does my education give me? What jobs does it prepare me for? What translates into a promotion? Defaulting to traditional grading does little to help us break out of this mold. Traditional grading is rigid—it’s not flexible. Students see the grades associated with it as given rather than earned, but that’s not self-awareness. It drives students to scheme how to earn the most points with the least effort—that’s not outward orientation, nor very vocational.
Fortunately, we do have an alternative.
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.