NetVUE Connections
NetVUE at AAC&U: Supporting Students’ Callings: Vocation in Higher Education
By Sheila Bauer-Gatsos, Special Assistant to the Provost, Dominican University
In January, a team of NetVUE experts presented at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. The theme of the meeting was “Answering the Call for Constructive Engagement,” and the NetVUE panel, “Supporting Students’ Callings: The Role of Vocation in Promoting Purpose in Higher Education,” was part of a track on advancing the public purposes of higher education.
AAC&U serves over 1,000 public and private, two- and four-year institutions, working to promote its mission of advancing “the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education.” This was NetVUE’s first time participating in one of their events, and our panelists explored the ways that public and private institutions can promote the purpose of higher education through intentional engagement in—and attention to—career development and preparation, civic learning, community engagement, student wellbeing, and purposeful pathways.
Our panel began with Terese Lund of Wingate University (NC), who used her expertise in purpose formation, emerging adulthood, and vocational discernment to present a framework that integrates purpose-centered learning at key moments in a student’s educational trajectory. Darby Ray of Bates College (ME) positioned community engagement and civic learning as particularly meaningful forms of vocational exploration and discernment, which are necessary in a world where purpose can be co-opted and commercialized across many contexts. Our third speaker, Michelle Hayford of North Carolina State University, shared a case study from her time at Dayton University (OH), working with The Common Good Players. Hayford argued for arts accessibility and the transformative power of arts engagement through partnerships with community organizations that care for the most marginalized. Kamara Jackson of Dominican University (IL) described the equity-minded and developmentally scaffolded career and vocation course sequence that is embedded into the core curriculum for all undergraduate students at Dominican, preparing students for positive outcomes after they leave the institution. Finally, Richard Sévère of Purdue University Northwest (IN) closed the panel by drawing in part on his work with first-generation students and students from the Black diaspora. He focused on the ways that a framework of vocation can help students to build the resilience they need both in college and beyond.
The panel was well attended, and participants asked good questions following the session about how to implement the kinds of curricular and co-curricular programs that the panelists described. The theme for the 2027 Annual Meeting, which will be held in Seattle, Washington, January 20–22, has not been set yet, but NetVUE clearly has much to offer. The call for proposals will open on June 29, 2026.
You can read more about this event in Sheila Bauer-Gatsos’s Vocation Matters blog post, where she reflects further on her experience facilitating this panel.
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