Tag: transformation

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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Breaking Vocational Barriers and Creating Student-Ready Institutions

Many students encounter barriers in higher education due to systemic barriers rather than personal inadequacies. Faculty and staff are urged to redesign courses and support systems to foster student readiness. Collaborative efforts between institutions and communities are essential for enabling student success and creating transformative educational environments that honor all learners’ vocational journeys.

Every year, some students have their dreams derailed after they fail gateway courses or are unable to secure admission into selective undergraduate or graduate programs. We—as faculty, staff, and administrators—sometimes assume the barrier is students’ ability and ask if they are college-ready. Tia Brown McNair and her colleagues remind us to flip the question and ask if the systems we created are student-ready. What if collectively, we are the problem?

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Second Chances and Good Time(s): Transformations and Transactions in Prison

What if we thought of education as a gift that is not contingent on the worthiness of its recipient yet that still inspires recipients to pay the gift forward with lives that serve the common good?

APEP faculty greeting student David Staples upon his release after serving 29 years for a crime he didn’t commit (Jason Mahn, center)

Three weeks ago, I submitted final grades for the January (J-Term) course that I taught at East Moline Correctional Center (EMCC) through the Augustana Prison Education Program (APEP).  I created the course, “Redemption, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice,” on the “inside-out” model of prison education. The plan was to shuttle traditional students each day to the local prison to learn beside their incarcerated classmates. Sadly, EMCC nixed that plan earlier in the fall, citing a shortage of security personnel. When Sharon Varallo, the executive director of APEP, asked me to choose whether to teach the course to free students or incarcerated students, I quickly chose the latter. I knew from some prior experiences that deep transformation of individuals and communities is more likely—or at least easier to notice—when teaching behind bars.

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#PissedOffPastor in Kenosha

Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake, is now the site of regular protests regarding social injustice and systemic racism. An important voice from the NetVUE community addressing these issues is Rev. Kara Baylor, Campus Pastor and Director of the Center for Faith and Spirituality at Carthage College, in Kenosha. 

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Life in the Resurrection Zone: Vocation in the midst of pandemic

Like us, the disciples long for things to get back to normal. They want the old Jesus back again; they want their old lives back again. Instead they get—resurrection. And resurrection is never resuscitation.

For most of us right now, there’s one question and one question only. Appropriate to vocation, it’s a Big Question: When will things get back to normal? 

When will we be able to gather in classrooms and places of worship again?  When will restaurants open again for more than take-out? When can we lose the masks, the hand sanitizer, the sand-papery hands? When will we be able to hold open doors, to shake hands, hug our loved ones? When will things get back to normal? Pay attention to that Big Question, as we move through these final weeks of the semester. The Resurrection Zone offers some surprising responses.

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“Learning to Do it Well:” Life, Love and Work in Middlemarch

Middlemarch was published serially over twelve months from 1871-1872

George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch was published nearly 150 years ago, in 8 installments from December 1871 to December 1872. Victorian readers would have had plenty of time to speculate on the characters’ decisions and lives as they awaited the next chapters to be published.  Waiting, you see, was part of serialized reading.

Taking a year to read a novel is an elusive experience for contemporary life centered on binge watching serial television or listening to episodic podcasts.  Immersion has its place, certainly, in a world that is fragmented and demanding, but reading over a period of time affords insight and transformation that compressed immersion does not.

“What is the quality of your waiting?” I once heard a spiritual leader ask.  Academic calendars don’t encourage waiting but our vocational discernment clocks, which should be set for a longer, more deliberate reflection, can. The quality of our waiting can allow us to respond with purpose.

Middlemarch is a novel about vocation—some might even argue, the novel about vocation. It portrays life slowly unfolding before us. Many have seen the novel as a guide to deliberating a professional path, to navigating adulthood, to choosing a marriage partner, to surviving small-town life. More broadly, a recent BBC poll ranked Middlemarch as the greatest British novel.  Continue reading ““Learning to Do it Well:” Life, Love and Work in Middlemarch”