Learning and Networking | NetVUE Consultations

NetVUE has offered consultations to its member institutions since 2011, when Carter Aikin, who now serves as the NetVUE grants director, made the very first visit to a campus. Today, NetVUE’s consulting team includes 15 trained consultants who bring deep expertise and a strong commitment to helping institutions advance their vocation-related goals. Consultations are a free benefit for member institutions and can serve as an important tool to support the work of vocation on your campus.

Each consultant has engaged extensively with NetVUE; consultants have participated in NetVUE summer seminars, integrated vocation into their own teaching and leadership, managed campus-wide grants and programming, and shared their work through presentations and publications. They bring to their consultations expertise in vocation as well as their passion for helping institutions strengthen their programming and mission in this area. The NetVUE consultants offer guidance across a wide range of topics, including:

• Institutional Mission, Strategy, and Culture
• Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Advising and Mentoring
• Professional Development for Staff and Faculty Members
• Student Experience and Co-Curricular Programming
• Inclusion & Belonging
• Community Engagement

You can meet the consultants here if you would like to learn more about their individual areas of expertise within the field of vocation.

What does a consultation involve?

Planning and participating in a consultation is a useful and generative process for our institutions. Campus leaders at member institutions review consultant bios and suggest candidates; NetVUE staff members then work to identify the best match based on institutional context and goals. Before the visit, consultants meet virtually with campus leaders to understand the institution’s demographics, its level of engagement and familiarity with vocation, and current campus initiatives.

During the visit, which is typically one to one-and-a-half days, the consultant helps the institution identify patterns and gaps in their current program, generate creative ideas through review of exemplars and dialogue, and clarify possible next steps and action items. The visits often include workshops, meetings with students, conversations with senior administrators, and strategy sessions with program leaders.

Impact

In 2025, NetVUE consultants visited ten institutions to engage issues that included preparing for a new grant application, integrating vocation across campus, incorporating vocation into general education, and getting started with NetVUE as a new member institution. Feedback from participating institutions is overwhelmingly positive: many campuses praised the consultants’ expertise, and 95% of respondents to post-consultation surveys reported that the visits advanced their vocation-related projects. One campus noted, “Our consultation came soon after we heard that we were awarded a NetVUE Program Development grant to support the launch of a center for teaching and learning (CTL). The consultation helped the drivers of that project crystallize the next steps. The visit also helped our general faculty body get a better idea of what vocational reflection and planning looks like for both students and faculty. Since our CTL plans to highlight vocational work as one of its major themes of operation, this visit set the CTL up for success in many ways.”

Interested in a consultation?

Would a consultation help your institution take the next steps on a vocation-related project or initiative? You can request a visit by filling out the brief application on the NetVUE Consultations website. If you’re not sure if a consultation is that right fit for your institution at this time, you can contact Rachael Baker, NetVUE associate director, at rbaker@cic.edu for a follow up conversation to think about the next steps together.