Wendell Berry critiques competition-driven economic systems, particularly in U.S. agriculture, arguing they diminish communal bonds and promote self-centered ambitions. Higher education perpetuates this by encouraging students to view success as individualistic. Instead, fostering a sense of contribution to the community can reshape students’ sense of vocation and enrich societal collaboration.
A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.
In “Economy and Pleasure,” Wendell Berry writes, “No individual can lead a good or a satisfying life under the rule of competition … no community can succeed except by limiting somehow the competitiveness of its members.” This impulse to compete, Berry argues, drives our economic system, which divides people into two categories: winners and losers. His particular focus in this essay is on agriculture in the United States, where he sees such competition as the dominant mentality: farmers race to acquire the education and resources necessary to defeat other farmers in a game governed by “the rules of competitive economics.”
Anna Bonta Moreland, a humanities professor at Villanova University, discusses her new book, The Young Adult Playbook, designed for undergraduates. It offers guidance on vocational reflection and emphasizes the importance of work, leisure, and relationships for a fulfilling life. Moreland aims to empower students to pursue meaningful lives beyond graduation.
Anna Bonta Moreland
In April, NetVUE’s podcast Callings released an episode that featured an interview with Anna Bonta Moreland. A professor of humanities at Villanova University, Anna also holds the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and directs the university’s honors program. While her academic expertise and research include medieval theology, interfaith dialogue, and comparative theology, she has also become passionate about educational renewal and the character and leadership formation of her students. She’s received both Templeton and Lilly Endowment grants for her work in these areas.
Recently, Anna coauthored The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters with Thomas Smith. Specifically written for undergraduates, the book invites them into and guides them in vocational reflection and discernment. But for Anna, writing the book represented her own vocational shift. It emerged out of a course she has been teaching senior honors students for the past eight years called Shaping an Adult Life—a course that helps these students, as she notes, “look beyond graduation and think about a life well lived as an adult.” While teaching the course, she felt “like I had put my finger on the raw nerve of my students’ lives,” and their “visceral” response to the course prompted her to write the book as a sort of “palate cleanser” from her previous scholarship. But it served as something more than a temporary shift in her own life as a writer, something much more significant. “This supposed palate cleanser,” she observed, “has ended up just becoming where I am, and I don’t want to leave.”
In January, a panel from NetVUE presented at the AAC&U Annual Meeting, focusing on higher education’s public purposes and vocational discernment. Panelists discussed integrating civic engagement, arts accessibility, and career development into education, emphasizing the need for collaboration and purpose in student experiences. The session highlighted both challenges and strategies for fostering student flourishing.
This January, I led a team of five colleagues affiliated with NetVUE who presented at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Annual Meeting: Answering the Call for Constructive Engagement. One of the meeting’s tracks was “Advancing Public Purpose,” providing attendees the chance to explore many related questions: how we define the public purposes of higher education, how we think about telling and retelling our stories, and how a sense of purpose informs our leadership. There were also opportunities to learn more about anchoring purpose in various undergraduate experiences, including liberal arts pathways, civic engagement, research, project-based learning, and career and professional opportunities. Our NetVUE panelists shared concrete strategies for incorporating vocational exploration into undergraduate education by attending to career development and preparation, civic learning, community engagement, student well-being, and purposeful pathways.
Presenters included (left to right): Sheila Bauer-Gatsos, Michelle Hayford, Kamara Jackson, Terese Lund, Richard Sévère, and Darby Ray.
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).
The author reflects on designing an impactful course for students that emphasized experiential learning and environmental stewardship. By integrating a campus transportation campaign and aligning with Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’, the course transformed student engagement, encouraging them to connect academic work with community service and cultivate their skills, thereby fostering a sense of agency and hope.
In my first year as a full-time faculty member, I designed a course that aligned with its stated objectives even as its ultimate outcomes extended beyond my control. I embedded a campus transportation campaign into the course, uncertain whether it would succeed. In hindsight, it was an ambitious undertaking—one that reinforced the challenges and rewards of experiential learning. Such an endeavor is not for the faint of heart, but its impact was transformative, particularly in the ways it shaped my students’ understanding of vocation and their engagement with the common good. Through their participation in the campaign, students began to see their academic work as more than an isolated exercise; it became a way to contribute to a larger community, address real needs, and effect tangible change.
Stephan T. Moore reflects on the enriching experience at NetVUE’s regional gathering focused on vocation and the common good at Furman University. The event fostered camaraderie among attendees, encouraging discussions on personal journeys and their impact in higher education. The gathering emphasized the importance of collective commitment to the common good for students.
Stephan T. Moore
Reflecting on my experience in February at Furman University’s regional NetVUE gathering—Vocation and the Common Good: The Call of Belonging and Community—I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to connect with so many remarkable colleagues and scholars from across the country. The environment fostered a deep sense of camaraderie, where five representatives from my own institution, Catawba College, came together with a shared purpose without being influenced by our titles or organizational structures.
As we gathered around stories of laughter, childhood memories, and our vocational work, I was reminded that our individual journeys—both professional and personal—have brought us to this point, where we strive for a common goal: impacting the lives of all of the students we serve, whether they are traditional or non-traditional. Our work is about creating a stable foundation for our institutions to thrive and continue to serve these students for years to come.
On September 12, 2024 Loras College hosted the launch of NetVUE’s “Big Read,” which this year is the book, “Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good.” This series showcases interviews with authors who contributed to this volume, and this post features Robert Pampel, author of “The University as the Common (Good) Place.”
A series featuring interviews with NetVUE Scholars whose essays appear in Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good, the most recent publication of the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project.
On September 12, over one hundred people gathered at Loras College for this year’s launch of NetVUE’s “Big Read,” which is Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good, the fourth volume of the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project. Edited by Erin VanLaningham (who also served as this gathering’s host), this new collection of essays brings together a diverse range of voices to consider vocation in relation to the concerns of the common good and communal flourishing. The event featured presentations by four of the volume’s authors, along with a powerful keynote address by Mary Dana Hinton, a conversation between two college presidents, and presentations by faculty and staff from Loras College, all of which aimed to provide educators with ways to think about the roles of leadership and advocacy as we deepen our understanding of the common good as an essential part of vocational exploration on our campuses.
Robert Pampel
This series of posts showcases interviews with NetVUE Scholars who contributed to this volume and generously agreed to respond to my questions about their experience participating in this project, as well as reflecting on their essays and their relation to vocation and the common good. For our first interview, I’m pleased to feature Robert Pampel, who graciously opened the Loras gathering with reflections on his chapter, “The University as the (Common) Good Place.” Robert is currently the director of student academic affairs and associate dean at Washington University, in St. Louis.
The final episode of this season’s Callings podcast introduces listeners to Christi Belcourt, a Métis artist, whose painting “Reverence for Life” appears on the cover of the most recent volume from the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project. In her interview with Erin VanLaningham and John Barton, Christi reflects on this painting and many others—as well as other facets of her life’s work—as powerful points of departure for insights into her own personal vocation as a visual artist and a community and environmental activist.
The final episode of this season’s Callings podcast introduces listeners to Christi Belcourt, a Métis artist, whose painting “Reverence for Life” appears on the cover of the most recent volume from the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project. In her interview with Erin VanLaningham and John Barton, Christi reflects on this painting and many others—as well as other facets of her life’s work—as powerful points of departure for insights into her own personal vocation as a visual artist and a community and environmental activist.
The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, associate professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University.
The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University. He is also a NetVUE faculty fellow and NetVUE scholar and has written extensively on the topic of supporting LGBTQIA+ students in their vocational journeys. In addition to serving as one of the faculty advisors for the Queer Student Alliance at Regis, he also leads Brave Space Trainings for the Queer Resource Alliance. His recent scholarship includes the essays “Queer Vocation and the Uncommon Good” in Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good and “Queer Callings: LGBTQ Literature and Vocation” in Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies.
In this post, I will share how the psychological literature defines self-compassion, my observations of self-compassion (or the lack of it) in students, and where self-compassion and vocation intersect.
In the new NetVUE volume, Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good, Meghan M. Slining’s chapter, “A Case for Compassionate Pedagogy: Caring for the Public’s Health, Cultivating Sustainable Vocations,” argues that our compassion can keep students engaged during difficult times. Compassion is a way of being with suffering that allows us to see, hold, and acknowledge suffering, while also compelling us to take actions towards reducing it. Slining suggests that training and skills related to compassion can help reduce burnout and support sustainable vocations, which are important for the longevity of caring for the common good. Slining notes that this compassion extends not only to those we serve or the external world but also to ourselves. Within both my previous clinical work and my current teaching, I have been interested in self-compassion, but only recently have I begun to see its intersection with teaching vocation. In this post, I will share how the psychological literature defines self-compassion, my observations of self-compassion (or the lack of it) in students, and where self-compassion and vocation intersect.
