NetVUE’s podcast Callings has dropped three exciting episodes since our last newsletter, featuring three voices who have made incredible contributions to the intersection of vocational reflection and academia: Parker Palmer, Katharine Hayhoe, and Shirley Hoogstra.
Shadow and Light | Parker Palmer
Published November 30, 2023
Well before the founding of NetVUE (and even before the Lilly Endowment’s vocation programming began in the late 1990s), Parker Palmer was recognized as one of the foremost scholars, authors, and speakers on vocation and calling. In this episode the author of Let Your Life Speak and many other books on vocation and calling reflects on the importance of paying attention to our mistakes, our achievements, and acknowledging both shadow and light in our human connections.
Crisis, Hope, and Action | Katharine Hayhoe
Published December 14, 2023
Katharine Hayhoe’s influence on conversations about climate change is known to many through her vibrant and engaging social media presence. As a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University and the author of the recently published Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, she uses her platform to educate and to inform. Katharine speaks openly as a deeply committed Christian about how she is called to be a scientist, using her work to shed light on the ways climate change affects the most vulnerable and the role hope has in sparking meaningful action.
Risks, Pivots, and Deep Grace | Shirley Hoogstra
Published January 17, 2024
Shirley Hoogstra has been an elementary school teacher, a litigator, a vice president for student life at Calvin University and, since 2014, the president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). In this conversation, she discusses vocational pivots, risk taking, effective leadership, the meaning of Christian higher education, and her passion for marginalized and underrepresented populations.
Check out the NetVUE blog Vocation Matters for a new cohort of bloggers this spring semester.
That cohort includes a team of faculty members at Nebraska Wesleyan University (Lincoln, NE) who will contribute a series on “Major Decisions, Major Discoveries: Exploring Vocation in the Undergraduate Years,” which focuses on how to help students develop meaning and purpose as part of their major coursework. The first posting in the series is featured below and contributors to this series include:
- Gina Chambers, professor of health and human performance
- Karla Jensen, professor of communication studies
- Rita Lester, professor of religion and gender and sexuality studies
- Meghan Winchell, professor of history and associate provost of integrative and experiential learning
Other bloggers in the spring cohort include faculty members from three other NetVUE member institutions:
- Prince Agbedanu, associate professor of biology, Friends University (Wichita, KS)
- Samantha Brown, assistant professor of psychology, Coe College (Cedar Rapids, IA)
- Kiki Kosnick, associate professor of French, Augustana College (Rock Island, IL)
To report a technical problem with the website, or to offer suggestions for navigation and content issues, please contact Alex Stephenson, NetVUE communications coordinator, at astephenson@cic.edu.