Sessions

Join us for further conversation with keynote speaker Norman Wirzba. The first part of the session with be devoted to a facilitated conversation with Wirzba, focusing not only on the themes raised in his keynote address, but also on his writings in important texts such as Love’s Braided Dance (Yale, 2024), Agrarian Spirit (Notre Dame, 2022), and This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World (Cambridge, 2021).

In this workshop, a team will present what they have learned from research and interviews about best practices in first-year programming, including what works well and what institutions might want to consider avoiding. Participants will have the opportunity to consider how they might approach vocation in their first-year programming based on the overall landscape of vocation at their institution.

In his chapter for the forthcoming NetVUE volume, Andy Chan calls us to rethink the work of the traditional college “career services” office. In this workshop, Chan will describe his vision for infusing career services with vocational exploration; in addition, he and his co-panelists will describe how this work is being carried out at their own institutions, with the goal of attending both to employability and to questions of meaning and purpose.

A group of chaplains and mission officers from NetVUE institutions have spent the last six months examining their evolving higher education roles in order to explore what kinds of programs and services might best support them and their institutions. In this interactive session, members of this project’s steering committee will describe what the group is learning through their readings, inquiries, and conversations.

Whether through the initiatives they launch or alongside the people for whom they have responsibility, staff and faculty members have rich opportunities to lead vocation-related work on campus. Participants in this workshop will hear from experienced leaders about the ways that vocation has informed their own work, both personally and professionally.

This session explores how NetVUE programming—including summer seminars, campus consultations, and workshops—can help embed vocational exploration in the fabric of an institution’s culture. Drawing on personal experience on their campus and their own engagement with NetVUE programming, presenters will explore practical strategies for integrating vocation across campus.

During this workshop, leaders will report on the ways that they understand and have navigated both the differences and overlap between their work on vocation with NetVUE and their work on character with the Educating Character Initiative. Participants will be invited to reflect on their understanding of vocation and character, as well as how both sets of concerns inform their goals for undergraduate education.

Join colleagues from one of seven available campus roles.

Four opportunities for worship and meditation are available at this time.