Category: resources

Article of Note: Employers’ Confidence in Higher Education Reflects Value of Vocational Exploration and Preparation

In December, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a report highlighting employer support for higher education’s role in preparing students for uncertain futures. The findings emphasize the importance of vocational exploration, informed citizenship, and community engagement, showcasing how colleges equip graduates with essential skills valued by employers.

In December, just as many of us were wrapping up courses and preparing for a much needed break, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a report—“The Agility Imperative: How Employers View Preparation for an Uncertain Future”—that should give many readers of this blog reason to feel confident about the vocational work we do to prepare students for their lives after college. In conversation with Inside Higher Ed, Ashley Finley, AAC&U’s vice president and report author, said that in contrast to the skepticism colleges and universities face from many Americans, “employers are higher education’s biggest fans. They value the ways in which colleges are preparing students to be nimble and agile for an uncertain future.”

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Article of Note: The Vocational Potential of General Studies Degrees

Scott Carlson’s newsletter highlights Rachel Elliot Rigolino’s insights on general-studies programs, emphasizing their value for nontraditional students returning to education. Rigolino argues that these programs foster vocational exploration, despite misconceptions of their lack of rigor. Her students’ experiences illustrate the potential for meaningful academic growth and professional development through such degrees.

Readers unfamiliar with Scott Carlson’s newsletter “The Edge” (which appears on the The Chronicle of Higher Education) might find a post from this past summer inspiring and relevant to the work we do within vocation studies. In this post, he celebrates one of the winners of its “Edge Essay Contest”—Rachel Elliot Rigolino and her submission, “What My General-Studies Students Taught Me About Higher Ed’s Future.” As a lecturer of English and coordinator of the Supplemental Writing Workshop at the State University of New York at New Paltz, Rigolino uses her experience in these areas to argue “for the power of an unusual approach,” as Carlson writes, “in service to a nontraditional student population.”

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Article of Note: Navigating Vocations with a Chronic Illness

In this post, Deanna A. Thompson comments on Amy Colbert’s reflection on navigating academia with a chronic illness, which highlights the identity challenges faced after an unexpected diagnosis like Parkinson’s. While she successfully finds new opportunities, the transition may not be attainable for all. Colbert emphasizes the importance of redefining one’s narrative and recognizing diverse vocations beyond career roles.

Deanna A. Thompson

A recent Inside Higher Ed piece by Amy Colbert offers a brave and instructive reflection for anyone navigating a vocation in the academy while living with a chronic illness. In it, Colbert recounts her meaningful work as chair of a department—one full of great colleagues and abundant strategic planning—that provided her with a strong sense of purpose. Then an unwanted Parkinson’s diagnosis came along and interrupted it all, upending the vision she had for her life before she got sick. As she reflects, Colbert shares the lessons she’s learned about how to navigate this vocational path that she did not choose.

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Fictional Narratives and Vocational Discernment

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.

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Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

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.

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Article of Note: The Good Life

A recent article in Inside Higher Ed shares research on how “good life courses” can prepare undergraduate students for more productive and meaningful lives.

A recent article in Inside Higher Ed shares research on how “good life courses” can prepare undergraduate students for more productive and meaningful lives.

Kristina Callina, Alicia Lynch, and Michael Murray conducted interviews with and collected survey data from professors and their students from 14 colleges and universities to determine if such courses work and how they work. They report their findings and explore the rising interest in such courses across the country in “Teaching the Good Life” (September 19, 2023). They identify “the essential pedagogical features of good life courses, how they impact students’ sense of purpose and well-being, and what educators can do to optimize successful implementation of good life courses at their postsecondary institutions.”

Not only do the findings show that these courses are valuable for students, but they also suggest that such courses can bring new energy to the humanities disciplines that often house and support them.

One of the institutions mentioned in the article, the University of Notre Dame, is home to a course called “God and the Good Life.” Among its teachers is UND philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan, who will deliver the keynote address at the 2024 NetVUE Conference.

Stephanie L. Johnson is the editor of Vocation Matters.

Articles of Note: Building Career Readiness

Two recent Inside Higher Ed pieces challenge us to consider how successfully we are preparing students for life after college.

In Career-Readiness Initiatives Are Missing the Mark, Matthew T. Hora (UW-Madison) suggests that many job-readiness initiatives on college and university campuses are not effective in part because  of “an overreliance on off-campus work-based learning as opposed to more accessible work-integrated learning in the classroom.” In the classroom, faculty can contextualize soft skills and build an equitable and inclusive environment, which is much different from exclusionary off-campus internship programs. He offers suggestions for academic departments to incorporate career-readiness into their curricula.

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Responding to Hora, Matt Reed reflects on Career Services in his latest post for Confessions of a Community College Dean. He advocates for faculty engagement with Career Services and the overt discussion of transferable skills in the classroom. “Faculty members who engage with career centers, and who share those lessons with students, can make an enormous difference” in the lives of students, he writes.

Stephanie L. Johnson is the editor of Vocation Matters.