Tag: campus programs

Closing the Gap: Integrating Vocation into Second-Year Initiatives

Many colleges lack support programs for second-year students, leaving them feeling isolated and without direction. Institutions are encouraged to integrate vocational exploration into academic advising and provide tailored support. Initiatives such as high-impact practices, applied learning, cohort events, and mentoring opportunities can enhance social connections and address students’ needs for purpose and career direction during their critical second year.

brown cardboard box with sad face
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When sophomores return to most colleges after the summer, they often discover less support than they received as first-year students. Half of institutions do not offer second-year initiatives to meet students’ needs. Given the scarcity of time and dollars, some institutions are simply relieved that second-year students have returned and then shift their focus almost exclusively to the newly arrived first-year students.

The absence of second-year programs leaves many students in their second year feeling invisible and isolated. In response, many institutions have embedded second-year initiatives into academic advising, career exploration and planning, early alert systems, leadership programs, and back-to-school events. Sophomore retreats, mentoring, and residence life initiatives have also become popular.

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Vocation and Lutheran Higher Education

The latest issue of Intersections, published by the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU), includes articles by colleagues at NetVUE schools about campus programs at their institutions. Entitled “Called and Empowered (and Assessed),” the Spring 2022 also includes a note from out-going editor (Jason Mahn, a contributor to this blog) and in-coming editor Colleen Windham-Hughes of California Lutheran University. As Jason states in his editor’s note, most of the essays summarize comments that were shared at the 2022 NetVUE Conference in Dallas this March, and/or at the NECU gathering that preceded the NetVUE Conference.

Contents of Spring 2022 Intersections.


Jason writes, “As the authors here testify, grants and guidance from NetVUE have been instrumental in supporting their work. At the same time, Lutheran institutions—with our uniquely historical and contemporary commitments to educate for vocation— have provided noteworthy leadership within these wider networks. I think that part of the work ahead of us is to own and live into that leadership role.” The issue can be downloaded here.