The NetVUE Blog
Vocation Matters
NetVUE’s blog Vocation Matters provides an online space for colleagues from across the country and around the world to share and reflect on issues related to vocational exploration.
In June, two new blog series kicked off as others continued over the course of the summer. Readers may be interested to explore these posts and keep up with subsequent (or previous) ones from these contributors:
- On June 5, Adam Gustine published “From Competition to Contribution: The Communal Context of Vocation,” the third post in his series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.
- Carrie Caudill started her series reflecting on her experience as a therapist with issues such as play, wandering, and presence in relation to vocational exploration and discernment. Her first post “Re-discovering Life’s Purposes through Childhood Play,” was published on June 9.
- A series featuring undergraduate student voices reflecting on their experiences of vocation and calling; on June 16, Hector Aponte launched this series with “Vocation and Values: An Undergraduate Perspective.”
- On June 29, Heather Brady and Amy Patterson continued their series on the role that community-engaged learning can play in vocational exploration and discernment with “Building a Vocational Praxis of Teamwork.”
Keep reading below for summaries of more recent posts.
Recognizing and Valuing the Identities of Student-Athletes | Angie Morenz
Published July 28, 2026
Continuing her series on student-athletes, Angie Morenz explores how these individuals form their identities as athletes, sometimes to the exclusion of other identities (including academic ones). Morenz identifies the unique role that athletic coaches can play both in helping students balance these identities and in encouraging other academic role models and guiding forces on campus to engage student-athletes in their preferred spaces. Throughout the post, she offers practical examples of how to do this work.
Sustaining Our Vocations with Purpose and Joy | Elisabeth Lefebvre and Kristin VanEyk
Published July 14, 2026
In this first post of a co-authored series on what faculty members need to thrive vocationally, Elisabeth Lefebvre and Kristin VanEyk recount their stories of starting to work as faculty members and earning tenure—along with the experiences of burnout that followed. Their post raises intriguing questions about Frederich Buechner’s oft-quoted definition of vocation, while also exploring its nuances. The two authors draw upon their recently published co-edited volume Purpose and Joy: Pursuing a Meaningful Career in Christian Higher Education to explore the principles that engender thriving as a faculty member.
AI and the Defiant Hope of Vocation | Caryn Riswold
Published July 2, 2026
Caryn Riswold has joined NetVUE’s staff in a part-time role as Senior Consultant, focusing on helping member institutions navigate the opportunities and challenges of generative AI. In this post, she acknowledges her initial reticence about AI as part of vocational exploration conversations. She then outlines three important ways NetVUE can enrich campus conversations about AI: practicing “the NetVUE slow down,” looking beyond AI as a merely utilitarian tool, and “defanging” AI so that colleagues can engage with it in ways similar to their approach to any other collective challenge.
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