Tag: hope

Building Connections and Community through NetVUE’s Big Read

NetVUE’s Big Read program promotes connections among educators, students, and communities in higher education by focusing on vocational exploration. This year features Norman Wirzba’s “Love’s Braided Dance” as a catalyst for meaningful discussions on hope and community building. The program includes webinars and resources to enhance campus engagement.

One of the greatest gifts of working in higher education is the opportunity to connect: with students, with colleagues, and with community. Educators focus on such connection throughout the academic year—as students learn and grow through all aspects of their undergraduate experience. The Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) hosts an annual Big Read program, which offers member institutions a significant way to deepen connection around our common purpose of helping students discern their callings and lead meaningful lives, while helping us connect with each other on our campuses.

The Big Read is a way for campus leaders to invite others into conversations about vocation and to cultivate expertise in vocational exploration across campus and within different parts of the undergraduate experience. The program provides an opportunity to engage with NetVUE resources, including this blog, the podcast Callings, the scholarship of vocation, and Studies in Vocation and Calling, NetVUE’s new journal. It can bring fresh and challenging ideas to the ways you might be thinking about vocation. It also can build meaningful connections and community, helping seasoned and new colleagues—faculty members, staff, and administrators—forge a common purpose. Reading can be, as I’ve written elsewhere, a “catalyst for considering and contributing to collective well-being.”

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AI and the Defiant Hope of Vocation

Recent seasons of prominent TV shows feature generative AI, reflecting its influence on various parts of society, including higher education. Addressing AI’s role in vocation work is essential, as it impacts human purpose and agency. Through NetVUE, discussions can explore AI’s transformative potential while encouraging a nuanced understanding of its implications limitations. Ultimately, NetVUE provides a much needed space to figure out how best to respond to this existential threat.

Storylines about generative artificial intelligence played key roles in the most recent seasons of several award-winning television shows, as viewers of The Comeback, Hacks, and The Pitt can attest to. These storylines are not surprising: AI is reshaping everything in our world from art and commerce to education and health care, and more pointedly, labor protections related to AI were a key feature of the 2023 writers’ strike in Hollywood. AI has also impacted higher education, itself full of events, institutes, seminars, conferences, and statements, with resources for faculty, staff, administrators, and campuses to engage in conversations about AI.

close up shot of a typewriter
Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

Given how AI has come to fill every nook and cranny of our culture—and likely your campus and professional life as well—what unique contributions does NetVUE bring to this conversation?

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Hope Circuits: Jessica Ridell

The latest NetVUE podcast episode features Jessica Riddell, a professor and researcher advocating for transformative change in higher education. In her book “Hope Circuits,” she explores fostering hope, equity, and creativity within universities. Riddell emphasizes renovating existing systems rather than destroying them, aiming for integrity and human flourishing.

Jessica Riddell

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Jessica Riddell, a speaker, professor, and researcher who focuses on systems change in higher education. Jessica’s recent book, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Systems for Human Flourishing, and her previous co-authored book, Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning, cover various facets of educating and leading across the university. Jessica is a professor of early modern literature at Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada, where she also holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. She is the founder of the think tank Hope Circuits Institute and sits on the board of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities. In all these roles, she participates in a wide range of conversations at national and international levels about how universities fulfill the social contract to our broader society.

Committed to cultivating hope in higher education, Jessica wrote Hope Circuits to challenge educators to reconsider the assumptions with which we operate. In it, she offers innovative tools that emerge out of the stories of luminaries she gathered for the project and helps us come to a clearer understanding of systems of governance, leadership, and institutional culture so that everyone in the university can flourish. But such flourishing isn’t limited to higher education, which she argues plays an important role in fostering creativity and democracy across sectors. “Higher education,” she says, “is the place where we keep democracy and ourselves alive and awake. And my goodness, we need to stay alive and awake at this moment.”

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Re-Experiencing the 2026 NetVUE Conference

In March, NetVUE hosted its biannual conference focused on vocational programming in higher education, themed “Vocation: An Itinerary of Hope.” Keynote speakers included Norman Wirzba and Almeda M. Wright, who shared transformative ideas. Highlights were summarized in an April 16 webinar, engaging discussions on vocation, advocacy, and resources for member institutions.

This March, NetVUE hosted its biennial conference, where teams from member institutions gathered to learn from each other, experience fellowship, and deepen their advocacy in relation to vocational programming for undergraduates at institutions of higher education. This conference’s theme—Vocation: An Itinerary of Hope for Higher Education—allowed attendees to attend thoughtful presentations, learn about cutting-edge ideas in the field, and take advantage of meaningful networking opportunities. NetVUE’s webinar on April 16, 2026, (Re)experiencing the 2026 NetVUE Conference, shared highlights from the event. (Readers at NetVUE member institutions can view recordings and presentations from the conference by following the links in this post and signing in to the NetVUE Online Community.)

Scenes from the 2026 NetVUE conference, including keynote speakers, Norman Wirzba (bottom left) and Almeda M. Wright (top right).
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Vocation is for Everyone: Becoming People of Hope

At the NetVUE conference in March, participants explored the theme of hope within vocational education, and this post reflects on how the conference provided opportunities to cultivate hope, even in moments of despair over issues like AI’s impact on higher education. Conversations reinforced the importance of human reflection in vocational discernment. A notable discussion with Patrick, a car service owner, illustrated the breadth of vocational understanding, highlighting that vocation is essential for everyone.

close up of a card with the word hope lying on a tree
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Vocation is a practice of hope. I recently attended the 2026 NetVUE Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, right on the heels of a communication conference. I realized quickly that I was having conversations at NetVUE about the same topics I had just discussed with my communication colleagues, but the tenor of the conversations were strikingly different. At NetVUE, the prevailing sentiment about circumstances in undergraduate education was that of hope.

I don’t mean that people were ignorant of the headwinds facing our institutions; I mean that the people I conversed with agreed that the work we do matters and is worth doing, despite the challenges we face. Indeed, hope was a fitting theme for the conference. It reinforced the belief that we can—as a group of networked colleagues—pursue a shared vision of shaping our students through sustained action to be people of hope. What was reinforced for me at the conference was that vocational education is one practice of hope.

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A NetVUE Conversation on Vocation and Character

On February 18, NetVUE hosted a webinar discussing the connections between vocation and character, featuring scholars Paul Wadell and Hannah Schell. They explored how to inspire students towards meaningful lives rooted in values amid a success-driven culture. The session also included audience questions and additional resources for educators.

On February 18, NetVUE hosted its most recent webinar, focusing on the deep connection between vocation and character. Speakers explored the power this connection has to shape who we become and live lives of meaning and purpose, guided by values and virtues—a challenging enterprise in a world that often rewards winning and success at any cost. The webinar featured Paul Wadell and Hannah Schell, two prominent scholars on virtue who both contributed essays to At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education, the inaugural volume from the NetVUE Scholarly Resources Project. In their presentations, they highlighted the urgency of this conversation at this moment in time and its potential for cultivating hope. Sharing how they became interested in the intersection of vocation and character, they also addressed the relational nature of these concepts and encouraged viewers to understand our callings within larger communal contexts.

Paul Wadell (left) and Hannah Schell (right).
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Vocation and Pedagogy I: Viewing Our Students with Hope

This post initiates a series on the interplay between vocation and pedagogy, highlighting the significance of hope in the classroom. It emphasizes student engagement and the necessity of viewing learners as valuable individuals. By implementing Universal Design for Learning, educators can create inclusive environments that foster vocational conversations and support students’ unique experiences and aspirations.

The first post in a series exploring the connections between vocation and pedagogy.

“What conversations about meaning and purpose do you wish we were having in the classroom?” I asked a group of my senior students and then held my breath. When I first began thinking about vocation, I felt overwhelmed by both the possibilities and the challenges of integrating it intentionally into my teaching. To help me do so, I invited my students to help me understand what they needed so that we could imagine what was possible. They were eager to engage, and their ideas jumped quickly among three elements: the content of the conversations, the possible structures for activities, and the culture of the classroom. As my students shared their thoughts, they connected content and pedagogy in ways that encouraged me to think more carefully about designing possible activities to give shape to and reinforce the unfolding conversation. It was the beginning of my learning journey, which has led to many interesting observations of the reciprocal relationship between vocational exploration with students and general pedagogy.

In this first post, I want to consider vocational and pedagogical hope in the classroom. Students are shaped by the hopes we hold for them and the value we see in them. Engaging vocation invites us to see our students not merely as the receivers of learning but as people whose experiences, skills, and passions have value. It challenges us to consider how our interactions contribute to their discernment and flourishing. To view students vocationally is to embody hope for them, as Paul Wadell so aptly describes. We cannot think vocationally without hope, and the learning spaces we create contribute to communicating that hope to our students.

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Choosing Hope: A Vocation for Educators

This post explores the relationship between vocation and hope, arguing that very nature of a purposeful vocation obliges us to cultivate hope in our lives and our work. Especially as educators, we are called to choose hope in our work with students and create meaningful learning experiences that allow them to do so the same.

a person holding an open book
Photo by Yelena from Pexels on Pexels.com

You will not find hope in the headlines. A daily reader of the news and a parent of children ages four, six, and nine, I confronted this paralyzing fact when I read this headline in early September—“Minneapolis Catholic school shooting leaves 2 children dead, 21 people injured.” As I began drafting my concluding post to this series on the theme of hope, I wondered: How do I write about hope in this context? I faced an especially steep challenge, one that had already felt formidable months ago. As I mourned the tragic shooting, I came to see more clearly: hope is, in and of itself, a chosen vocation. It requires practice, strength, and imagination—a wholehearted willingness to keep envisioning new possibilities, even when the odds feel long. Truth be told, it is the harder choice.

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A Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope: Emmanuel Katongole

Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest and theology professor, discusses his vocational journey in the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings, emphasizing themes of identity, belonging, and the complexities of living a life that crosses boundaries. His experiences illustrate how dislocation can help explore questions of home and community and foster a deeper understanding of self and hope in creating a better world.

Emmanuel Katongole

In the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings, our hosts John Barton and Erin VanLaningham speak with Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest in Uganda and a professor of theology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. Known for his work on violence and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, Katongole is a theologian of peacebuilding and reconciliation who confronts the complexities of callings in various contexts. He is the author of many books, his most recent being Who Are My People? Love, Violence, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Katharine Hayhoe on the Practice of Hope

Erin VanLaningham and John Barton interview atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe on the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast, Callings.

Katharine Hayhoe

Erin VanLaningham and John Barton interview atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe on the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast, Callings. Katharine is a distinguished professor and the Political Science Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University, where she is also an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She currently serves as the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy as well. Her most recent book is Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.

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