Celebrations
Congratulations to the 2026 Recipients of Vocation Across the Academy Grants
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), through its Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), has awarded the Vocation Across the Academy Grant to eight institutions in a total amount of over $550,000. These grants support institutions in their efforts to expand vocational exploration and discernment programs across curricular and co-curricular programs or across all four years of the college experience. CIC and NetVUE are grateful for the support of Lilly Endowment Inc., which makes this grant possible. This is the ninth year that this NetVUE grant was awarded, bringing the total to 99 Vocation Across the Academy Grants awarded to member institutions.
“Each selected project pursues sound personal and pre-professional student formation overlaid with structures for reflection on meaning, purpose, and vocation,” said Carter Aikin, grants director at NetVUE. “Program design is excitingly diverse in this cohort, with emphases ranging from curriculum design and student advising to community engagement and student athletics. Structures range from a wide-reaching campus chapel program to a four-campus vocation-centered collaboration.”
NetVUE empowers independent colleges and universities to guide undergraduates in exploring and discerning their many callings in life. This cohort of grant recipients is launching comprehensive initiatives to embed vocational discernment across the undergraduate experience. By building faculty capacity and strengthening external partnerships, these projects will create sustainable campus ecosystems that help students from diverse backgrounds explore their callings and prepare for lives of meaningful contribution to our world. For more information about each project, visit the NetVUE website. The list of institutions receiving this Vocation Across the Academy grant in 2026 and the names of projects are included below:
Bluffton University (OH)
Reinvigorating Vocation: Mentoring, Athletics, and Community
Dominican University (IL)
Culturally Sustaining Pathways: A Four-Institution Collaboration
Hastings College (NE)
Civic Engagement and Calling: A First-Year Foundation
Jarvis Christian University (TX)
Redesigning Mission-Centered Formation
Mitchell College (CT)
The Integrated Journey: A Four-Year Developmental Framework
Otterbein University (OH)
Scaling Vocation: Equitable Access and Professional Partnerships
Pacific Lutheran University (WA)
The Vocational Core: A Scaffolded Four-Year Curriculum
Tabor College (KS)
Common Language, Shared Mission: Vocation and Leadership Formation
More about CIC and NetVUE
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) is an association of over 600 nonprofit independent colleges and universities, state-based councils, and higher education affiliates that works to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence, and enhance public understanding of independent higher education’s contributions to society. CIC provides members with ideas, resources, and programs that help institutions improve their leadership expertise, educational programs, administrative and financial performance, and institutional visibility.
The Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) is a program of CIC with over 350 members. The purpose of 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. The process of vocational reflection is an interdisciplinary endeavor, bringing together theological, philosophical, ethical, historical, and affective approaches, and implementing the theoretical reflections of these fields in vocation-related practices. Campuses are encouraged to support students in this work through a variety of academic departments, pre-professional programs, and campus offices. NetVUE is governed by a principle of subsidiarity: individual member institutions are encouraged to shape their work related to vocation and calling— including the vocabularies that they use to describe this work—in ways that are best suited to their own missions, teaching philosophies, student demographics, and other matters best known to those who lead and guide this work on campus.
To report a technical problem with the website, or to offer suggestions for navigation and content issues, please contact Madeline Smanik, NetVUE communications specialist, at msmanik@cic.edu.