vocation matters

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 — *^{Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com}*

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.

Reflecting before I Assign Reflection: On Vocational Exploration in Business Education

The author reflects on the integration of vocational exploration within business education, highlighting the mismatch between students’ career readiness and the search for purpose. Despite feelings of imposter syndrome, she is driven to empower students to connect professional success with personal values, advocating for a holistic understanding of vocation in business contexts.

I’ve got a confession: When I applied for a NetVUE grant to embed vocational exploration in my organizational communication program, I did it partly because I knew I had what we in business call a “unique selling point.” Ever since being introduced to NetVUE, I’ve been reading its blog posts and listening to its podcast episodes, so I knew that my application would be considered alongside proposals for further integrating calling into English, philosophy, and theology programs. I was confident that NetVUE would be interested in bringing the language of calling into classrooms where it’s rarely, if ever, heard.

But that strategic thinking was not my only motivation. My study of organizational communication majors shows that students struggle with career transitions because they can’t connect professional preparation with individual purpose. My research on mid-career women reveals how a clash of personal and professional values lead to career disruptions—research with such a wide scope that it’s the foundation of my forthcoming book.

I know that underemphasizing vocation has serious consequences across the lifespan of work. But here’s what I didn’t know when I submitted my proposal: a serious case of imposter syndrome would follow.

Experiential Learning is the New College

At Friends University, pre-health students engage in professional shadowing to gain real-world experience and clarify their vocations and career paths. These activities have shown to be instrumental, helping students assess their interests and capabilities in various healthcare professions. Reflections from these experiences often reveal significant insights into their vocational choices.

As pre-health students wrestle with doubts about the paths they’ve chosen or struggle to find their place within the healthcare sector, vocational exploration is more crucial now than it ever has been. In our pre-health programs at Friends University, students want to engage in activities that give them real-life experience to help them navigate these challenges. These students want to know that their learning is useful and applies to their careers—to see with greater clarity their professional futures as they begin their training for it. In short, they want experiential learning.

Vocational Formation as Humane Learning: Insights from Chris Higgins’s Undeclared

In his book Undeclared, Chris Higgins criticizes the focus on job preparation in universities and proposes a vocational formation that integrates personal values and ethical understanding into work. This post explores his emphasis on the importance of practical reasoning and ethical considerations in education, and points to ways we might prepare students for a meaningful and ethical life and work.

In his new book Undeclared (available via open access from MIT Press), Chris Higgins usefully criticizes the “jobbification” of the contemporary university. In its place, he describes an ideal of vocational formation that both inspires and has the potential to guide our actions.

The final chapter of Undeclared begins with a familiar dilemma. A humanities department is called to justify their budget and faculty lines (if not its very existence). In response, Higgins offers what may seem like a counterintuitive suggestion. Rather than argue for how the humanities prepare students for the job market, or defend the separation of humanistic inquiry from vocational concerns (even though both have the virtue of being true), Higgins suggests that an expansive vision of vocation can reinvigorate humane learning in our time.

Paul Hanstedt on What Matters

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features a conversation with Paul Hanstedt, director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University.

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features a conversation with Paul Hanstedt, director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University. In addition to consulting on general education and on faculty and curricular development, he is author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World (2018) and writes on pedagogy for Inside Higher Ed and Liberal Education.

Paul shares his excitement for working with undergraduates, especially beginning students: “they have hope,” he says, and in their first year of college, we often see their important “shift from lack of agency to agency.”

Called to Build Peace

How can people with different views on issues that matter have meaningful conversations?

My students in first-year composition may or may not care about writing a paper, but when I ask this question the first day of class, they are with me. They are tired of the shouting stalemate they see in our current discourse, and they want to do better.

As educators today, and particularly in the humanities, we face several challenges: how do we lead students into worthwhile conversations and real learning on controversial issues? How can we help students overcome their natural obstacles to understanding others, especially understanding views different from their own? How do we help them “loosen up so they can learn,” as my colleague Paul puts it—to open up intellectually and emotionally so that they can engage with the world?

Rowan Williams on Imagining and Creating Common Ground

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast series Callings features a conversation with Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the most recognized Christian leaders of our era.

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast series Callings features a conversation with Rowan Williams, one of the most recognized Christian leaders of our era. Rowan is a professor, public theologian, author, and poet, and from 2002 to 2012, he served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, which is the senior leadership position in the Church of England and the ceremonial head of the Anglican Communion worldwide.

Rowan describes his youth as being “immensely well-blessed with communities and pastors who encouraged that sense . . . that living with the Christian Gospel was living in a larger world, not a smaller one.” Even in retirement, his sense of vocation is grounded in the call from others’ needs and pain. He is guided by the questions, “What is being given to me here? And what is being asked of me here?” Our calling, he says, comes from those around us who are saying, “We want to see Jesus.”

Counter Storytelling in The Purpose Gap

Patrick Reyes makes effective use of his own stories yet this is much more than simply “sharing” his perspective or conveying his personal story. It is a powerful example of counter-storytelling.

Patrick Reyes’ The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive is an engaging, highly readable, and thought-provoking book that can be used to spark important conversations with students. The book does several things simultaneously. At one level, it offers a timely and needed challenge to the traditional discourse about vocation, and for that reason alone readers of this blog should pay close attention. It weaves together insights about how personal and communal thriving are intertwined; the import of design thinking—the physical design of urban spaces as well as the power of stargazing far away from visual noise; institutional vocation; cultural commutes and the challenges of “going home” when that commute is vast; the power of networking; and attending to daily practices. In short, there is A LOT packed into this book of less than 200 pages. Reyes intersperses these discussions with reflection questions for the reader, making the book user-friendly and ready-to-use with students both in and out of the classroom.

Reyes also uses stories from his own life to underscore his larger point about “the purpose gap.” In its pedagogical use of autobiographical anecdotes combined with an invitation to the reader to reflect on their own life, the book is not unlike Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, and yet there is a world of difference between the two books and the stories they tell. That difference is both a matter of privilege and of the target audience for each book. In this post, I want to explore how Reyes makes effective use of his own stories because it is much more than simply “sharing” his perspective or conveying his personal story. It is a powerful example of what critical race theory calls counter-storytelling.

Exploring Selfhood in Let Your Life Speak

There are many resources available for engaging undergraduates in vocational exploration. I have found Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak to be an abundant source, full of passages that engage students and which easily serve as the basis for journal prompts that can be met with authentic response, leading students into rich vocational exploration and discernment. Palmer provides personal stories and invites readers to engage in their own vocational discernment in a stepwise manner. By first exploring authentic selfhood, he then asks the reader to search the depths of their inner life prior to exploring how to live and serve others within their community—to serve in a way that is authentic to your true self. He then calls them to step forward to lead within society. Finally, Palmer leaves readers with the idea that the vocational journey follows a process akin to the cycles of the seasons. As the first in a series on using Palmer’s book as a resource, in this post I will highlight the first step: exploring selfhood.

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Tag: reflection

Vocation is for Everyone: Becoming People of Hope

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Reflecting before I Assign Reflection: On Vocational Exploration in Business Education

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Experiential Learning is the New College

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Vocational Formation as Humane Learning: Insights from Chris Higgins’s Undeclared

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Paul Hanstedt on What Matters

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Called to Build Peace

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Rowan Williams on Imagining and Creating Common Ground

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Exploring Selfhood in Let Your Life Speak

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