If you have not already read the general guidelines for using the topical guides, please begin here. As a reminder, these guides are intended to stir your initial thinking, not offer comprehensive guidance. We do encourage you to explore the questions and resources in this guide with at least one other person on your campus.
Introduction
Emphasizing vocation in the first year is appealing to many institutions because it allows them to reach a wide swath of students at the same time. Moreover, done well, it promotes early buy-in for vocation and orients students to a culture of vocation on campus. On the other hand, integrating robust vocation programming into the first year comes with some significant challenges—and even has some disadvantages.
Vocation in the first year should not carry the primary, much less the sole weight of a campus’s vocation efforts. Campuses are encouraged to imagine vocation in the first year as an invitation to something bigger rather than as a motor that drives all other vocation programming. Vocation in the first year functions most effectively as a gateway to broader vocation initiatives, with the goal of simply introducing new students to the language of vocation (in the campus’s language) and to some basic skills for vocational discernment—and to do so in a way that is accessible to all students as they start their academic journeys.
Similarly, vocation in the first year should not be the programmatic starting point for campuses who are new to NetVUE and vocation programming. Rather, institutions benefit from strong vocational scaffolding—in the form of professional development for personnel, a shared campus vocabulary for vocation, and student-oriented programming in other areas—prior to designing and piloting vocation programming in the first year. When these things are in place, vocation in the first year can do vital work.
Questions to Consider
- What are the existing frameworks and programs for first-year students on your campus? How are new students introduced to your campus culture, your institutional mission, and the arc of the student experience (curricular and co-curricular) on your campus?
- If you are seeking to implement or refine vocational programming in the first year broadly or the first-year seminar more narrowly, what would your most fundamental goals be?
- The first year experience involves many people and areas of campus. Who needs to be at the table to consider incorporating vocation into the first year?
Resources
Blog Post
Exploring Vocation in First-Year Programs
by Rachel Pickett
First-year writing courses provide an ideal context for helping students recognize how technology threatens the attentiveness, deep thinking, and empathetic engagement essential to living vocationally across all their callings. Stevens describes using readings to help students confront how digital habits erode their capacity for sustained concentration, accurate perception of reality, and meaningful face-to-face conversation. The difficult conversations that arise from these challenges become part of the “talking cure” that awakens students to proactive responsibility for protecting their vocational development.
Blog Post
First Year, First Virtue: Attentiveness, Technology, and First Year Writing
by Jason Stevens
Stevens argues that first-year writing courses provide an ideal context for helping students recognize how technology threatens the attentiveness, deep thinking, and empathetic engagement essential to living vocationally across all their callings. Drawing on Paul Wadell and Charlie Pinches’ framework of “situating virtues,” Stevens describes using readings from contemporary authors to help students confront how digital habits erode their capacity for sustained concentration, accurate perception of reality, and meaningful face-to-face conversation. The difficult conversations that arise from these challenges become part of the “talking cure” that awakens students to proactive responsibility for protecting their vocational development.
Podcast Episode
An Investment of Time
with Richard Sévère
Sévère shares his approach to mentoring, friendship, and vocation in this episode, drawing in part from his work with first-generation students and students from the Black diaspora. Richard shares how purposefully connecting with colleagues and students to hear their stories can allow a sense of difference to inform vocational discernment. Such intentional conversations foster an exploration of life, identity, and diversity that can build students’ confidence and a willingness to explore all aspects of a college experience. In such moments, vocational discernment emerges as an “investment of time.”
Example Activities
The most effective vocation activities to do with first-year students are those that equip students for greater self-awareness, giving them opportunities and structure to build the skill of self-reflection. Shared below are two examples of activities that can work in the classroom or in co-curricular contexts.
Voices Calling You Exercise
This activity can stand alone or be paired with Vincent Harding’s short essay “I Hear Them… Calling” from Leading Lives that Matter 2nd Ed. Invite students to think about the many voices impacting their sense of self and calling. Reflection questions could include:
- What messages is society giving you about what will make your life meaningful or purposeful or happy?
- What are the voices of the people who raised you telling you about what will make your life meaningful or happy?
- What about the voices of others (friends, coaches, professors, religious leaders, or others who are in a position to influence you)?
- To what extent might these voices and callings be helpful?
- To what extent might there be too many voices and callings in our lives?
Energy Givers Reflection
Using one or more of the following prompts, invite students to reflect on how their interests, desires, or curiosities might guide them toward self-understanding:
- What are you noticing about the things that draw your attention, spark your curiosity, or feel meaningful to you lately? Take some time to explore whatever comes to mind. Create a list of (or draw) emerging interests, desires, or curiosities.
- Think of college as a giant fitting room. You get to “try on” different interests, classes, roles, and experiences to see what fits you—what feels natural, exciting, or meaningful. Some things might surprise you; others you might decide to leave behind. What are some things you’d like to “try on” during your time in college—academically, personally, or professionally?
- Our world is full of needs at the local, national, and global levels. Which needs stand out to you or resonate most deeply? Which needs feel most relevant or meaningful for you right now?
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