Entering a classroom can be daunting for both new professors and students. Many students may feel isolated, lacking connections with peers. Fostering friendships through group projects and ungraded exercises can enhance belonging and satisfaction. Creating an inclusive environment benefits students academically, emotionally, and vocationally, enhancing their overall college experience.
Walking into a classroom on the first day of a semester can be intimidating, especially for new professors. A room full of strangers looks at you, expecting so much, including a masterful demonstration of your disciplinary expertise. If I as a faculty member can can admit that this experience has been daunting, especially in the early years of my teaching career, imagine what a room full of strangers feels like for some students.
For years, I assumed (wrongly) that the students in my classes knew each other. Certainly, I thought, they had certainly spent time together at orientation, sporting events, and the student union. That perspective ended quickly one afternoon when a student shared something that surprised me.
How might my teaching change if I acknowledged that developing a capacity for friendship is a fundamental component of the overall process of learning?
This spring, I took a class on a field trip to the main campus of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, a community of Catholic women whose charism includes a call to live sustainably and work for environmental justice. Some of our course texts highlighted the natural world as an emerging source of spirituality among nonreligious young people in the US, and I wanted students to see that many traditional religious communities find God in nature, too. The question was how today’s “nones” might resonate with, well, nuns.
On a beautiful Saturday in April, we walked the immense campus and heard the Sisters’ attention to the land is rooted in their love of God and all that belongs to God. The following Tuesday, I asked the students what they had learned on the trip. My focus on course content had me looking for evidence of learning in conceptual connections, so when students’ initial responses provided such evidence, I thought “great, objective achieved.” But then someone offered a different sort of comment: “What I really liked is that we were outside walking and talking with each other. I feel like I got to know people. Obviously I’ve seen you guys all semester, but I hadn’t really seen you. Just being together like that is what will stick with me. I learned I should do it more.”
Genuine human connection: another objective achieved! Yet it hadn’t been an explicit objective because, to be honest, the weight I give to conceptual learning often relegates connection and friendship to the periphery. When it happens, wonderful, but it’s not really the goal. How might my teaching change if I acknowledged that developing a capacity for friendship is a fundamental component of the overall process of learning?
The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast series Callings features a conversation with scholar, writer, and speaker Deanna Thompson.
The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast series Callings features a conversation with scholar, writer, and speaker Deanna Thompson. She serves as the Martin E. Marty Regents Chair of Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College, where she also directs the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. In this conversation with hosts Erin VanLaningham and John Barton, she shares her passion to talk about “the vocations we don’t choose”—the place, she says, “where a lot of us live.”
Jason Mahn (Augustana College, IL) interviews a former student in order to learn more about the callings to justice-work among students of color and how he and other white professors can better support them as they live out those callings.
A conversation with activist Dezi Gillon (Augustana College, ‘16).
Dezi Gillon
Dezi Gillon (they/them) is a teaching artist and healer living on occupied Potawatomi territory—what is known today as Rogers Park, Chicago. In 2016, they graduated from Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois) with Religion and Sociology majors, having participated in Interfaith Understanding, Black Student Union, AugiEquality, and Micah House, a residential intentional community. They went on to graduate from Union Theological Seminary (New York) with an MDiv in 2019 and are currently working with Alternatives Youth and Family Services as a restorative justice coach and educator. I interviewed my former student in order to learn more about the callings to justice-work among students of color and how I and other white professors can better support them as they live out those callings.
This current moment of crisis challenges us to stop and re-consider our old assumptions and practices. By thinking in terms of holistic mentoring that emphasizes students’ larger sense of meaning and purpose, NetVUE institutions have already moved into a new paradigm. This is a good time to review what we already know to be true about vocation-centered mentoring, and to ask how we can continue to support students using online formats.
In a recent essay in Inside Higher Ed, Eric R. White, associate dean for advising emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and former president of NACADA, called upon his colleagues to begin to re-imagine a new model for academic advising, one that takes into account the realities that higher education will inevitably confront in the coming years. As with the shift to on-line teaching this spring, academic advising also had to pivot to relying upon online communication forms. White argues that such a shift was almost “second nature” to many, given that in recent years “academic advising was one of the first higher education endeavors to embrace technology as a way to supplement its work.”
The sanguine picture White paints may not align with the reality for many advisors this spring. Being comfortable with online technology is one thing but getting students to respond to offers for help and support is another. During a NetVUE-sponsored Zoom gathering in April, people described texting with individual students as an effective way to simply inquire about how they were doing, their family situation, and overall well-being. At another meeting, Student Affairs administrators described the importance of getting in touch with every student over those initial weeks of anxiety, bewilderment, and grief—an “all hands on deck” endeavor. I came away from those Zoom meetings reaffirmed about the passion and commitment of NetVUE colleagues from across the country. Even in a state of exhaustion, they operate from a deep sense of calling; they are “nimble” because they know how to stay connected to fundamentals.
Jacqueline recently recorded a short video slip (26 minutes) in which she shared her “top ten” thoughts about what makes life worth living. The video is part of a series put together by the Living Well Center for Vocation and Purpose at Lenoir Rhyne University, where Mindy Makant is the director.
Humanism’s approach of emphasizing relationship, strengths, and human potential make it a particularly useful framework for undergraduate mentoring relationships that foster vocational discernment.
Any relationship can be therapeutic, according to Carl Rogers (1902-1987). In psychology there are many theoretical approaches to counseling and various clinical techniques. The common factor among all effective therapies is the working relationship between the two parties. In higher education there are numerous opportunities for building rewarding relationships with students and colleagues. Humanism’s approach of emphasizing relationship, strengths, and human potential make it a particularly useful framework for undergraduate mentoring relationships that foster vocational discernment.
At NetVUE’s Faculty Development Workshop on Teaching Vocational Exploration in June, Paul Wadell presented a paper entitled “Mentoring for Vocation – Befriending Those Entrusted to Us.” The paper was well-received because it spoke to mentorship as an essential part of vocation. The article is published in the Journal of Catholic Higher Education, yet is relevant to those who may not be Catholic. As Wadell explains, the language of “friendship” may be more “inviting, understandable, and relatable” to those who may not have explicit religious commitments and are increasingly part of a diverse academy. “Friendship” can help us better understand “mentorship” even though the concepts are distinct and have unique traits. Wadell then proceeds to list three specific ways in which the metaphor of “friendship” can give us insights into who a mentor can potentially be.
Do you have students who agonize over how they can justify living-college-life-as-usual when so much is so wrong in the world? Likewise, do you find yourself conflicted about how to teach when your heart is troubled by hatred and violence directed at vulnerable groups, by the state of division in our country, and the degradation of our planet?
