Learning and Networking | Reflection on “Integrating Vocation in the Academic Disciplines”

In late May, Hope College in Holland, Michigan, hosted a NetVUE regional gathering on Integrating Vocation in the Academic Disciplines. This gathering was born out of Hope College’s NetVUE Vocation across the Academy grant, in which faculty members redesigned courses in nine different academic departments over the past few years. Academic disciplinary courses have sometimes been relegated to the margins of campus vocation initiatives given the ways that other areas of campus life—general education, career development, student life, and religious life—often serve as the center of vocational programming and culture-building. This gap creates compelling opportunities for students to connect vocation to the knowledge and skills they learn in their academic disciplines, especially since their major often grounds their vocational focus. The gathering sought to recognize the importance of paying attention to disciplinary courses within academic majors as students explore and discern their vocations.

During workshop-style plenary sessions (facilitated by NetVUE Scholar and Faculty Fellow Geoffrey Bateman), participants engaged in reflective exercises designed to deepen their understanding of vocation. The sessions began with an exploration of how personal professional callings, institutional missions, and students’ evolving sense of vocation might meaningfully align within a discipline’s curriculum. Participants considered foundational questions about their disciplines, including: What is the purpose of your field of study? What aspects of your discipline resonate with or contribute to vocational exploration? The sessions then guided participants through strategies for inviting students into vocational conversations specific to their disciplines. This included curricular mapping activities aimed at identifying opportunities to integrate vocation-centered dialogue more intentionally throughout academic programs.

Disciplinary breakout sessions throughout the gathering allowed participants to explore applications of these questions to the work in their own disciplines. Participants shared that being in conversation with others from different disciplines helped them see new ways to approach familiar problems. Additional breakout sessions and a closing panel led by faculty members at Hope College provided tangible examples of vocation across the disciplines. Examples included how to use space in the classroom for contemplative practices, how Hope’s history department integrates vocation into its curriculum, and opportunities within courses for building community and collaboration. To learn more about what unfolded during the gathering, watch the short video below that captures highlights and some lessons learned from the event.

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