Extending a NetVUE Benefit to Nonmember Campuses
Engaging students with questions of meaning and purpose is central to the work of higher education. The purpose of the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) is to increase the capacity of independent colleges and universities to support their undergraduate students as they explore and discern their many callings in life.
From our member institutions, we have seen how intentional engagement with these questions can be life-giving and contribute to flourishing across campus. Because we believe in the value of this work and the importance of these conversations, we want you to have a chance to experience it for yourself. We are pleased to offer CIC member institutions a free vocation workshop to learn more about why you want your students to think about vocation and how you can make it work on your campus.
The NetVUE Vocation Workshop program brings learning opportunities to institutions by working with on-campus teams to provide content and support for vocation-related projects in the form of a facilitated workshop by an experienced NetVUE consultant. This program is used by NetVUE members in a variety of ways, from supporting the launch of a new on-campus project to helping an institution explore how to reshape or redirect an existing project. The topics and audience for a vocation workshop can vary depending on the needs of the institution.
Watch a video of a recent Vocation Workshop hosted at a NetVUE Member Institution, Waynesburg University.
“When colleges and universities meaningfully engage their organizational histories to launch sustained conversations with students about questions of purpose, the result is a rise in overall campus engagement and re-calibration of post-college trajectories that set graduates on journeys of significance and impact.”
Tim Clydesdale, The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students about Vocation.
Arranging Your Free Vocation Workshop
All CIC members that are not yet members of NetVUE are eligible for a free one-time “Vocation Workshop,” in which a NetVUE leader visits campus to run a workshop exploring vocation and its relevance for your campus. While this opportunity is ordinarily only available to NetVUE members, non-members are now eligible to request one workshop at no cost. This is extended as a benefit of your CIC membership. We suggest that you consider our workshop Meaning and Purpose in the College Experience: Not Just Making a Living, but Making a Life. This workshop is designed to introduce faculty members and staff to the concepts of vocation and calling, and to create space for them to consider the use of these concepts for their own work on campus. If a different kind of vocation-related workshop would be better for your institution’s context, we are happy to work with you to design something that would provide a good match for your circumstances.
To arrange your workshop, contact Rachael Baker, NetVUE director of professional development, at rbaker@cic.edu or 616-526-7939.
Feedback from previous vocation workshops
The leader was PHENOMENAL!! Thank you so much for bringing her to share with us. She was inspiring and shared several specific tools that I can implement in my classroom.
I very much enjoyed the consultant’s training. My mind is racing for how to structure my courses this summer. Thank you! I came away feeling inspired.
The storytelling that emerged as we traced our own paths was just what we needed. Ultimately, we were able to strategically map new initiatives onto our curriculum for the major. I truly don’t think we could have done it without you!
More about NetVUE
The Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) is a nationwide network of more than 300 colleges and universities formed to support and enrich vocational exploration and discernment among undergraduate students. A program of the Council of Independent Colleges, NetVUE is supported by the generosity of Lilly Endowment Inc. and member dues.
Interested in the benefits of NetVUE membership? Find out more here.
To report a technical problem with the website, or to offer suggestions for navigation and content issues, please contact Alex Stephenson, NetVUE communications coordinator, at astephenson@cic.edu.