Sessions

(Pre-registration required) This pre-conference workshop will equip participants with tools and practices for crafting vocational stories. The workshop will include instruction on craft, a range of writing activities, and practice with the art of giving and receiving constructive feedback within a community of writers.

(Pre-registration required) Experiential learning reinforces the authentic, relational experiences that transformative education can foster—experiences at the heart of our universities’ missions and critical value propositions. This pre-conference workshop explores the intersection of vocation and community-engaged learning (CEL), emphasizing the benefits of deepening our vocational discernment practices with students who are engaged in the powerful work of CEL.

(Pre-registration required)

Calling all poets and poetry lovers! This session will feature volunteers of all levels of mastery to share a favorite poem, be it their own work or someone else’s that they admire. All conference participants are invited to this time of relaxed and informal sharing, and the roles of audience and readers are equally valuable. […]

An optional gathering led by CIC President Marjorie Hass. Participants from all faith traditions are welcome. Host: Marjorie Hass, President, CIC

Join us for a rich opportunity to reflect on the joys and challenges of persisting in our work in higher education. Workshop leaders will draw on language and themes from Miller-McLemore’s recent book, Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, as they share how they have navigated their vocations as educators.

In this interactive session, participants will learn more about Scriptural Reasoning and how it can provide an opportunity to read and interpret sacred texts in ways that encourage conversation around deep reflective themes. These themes, which often form part of the backdrop for vocational reflection, range across the entire spectrum of human experience—from the sense of catastrophe facing many people, on the one hand, to narratives of divine abundance in creation on the other.

Last summer, the Council of Independent Colleges launched the NetVUE LIVE Project (Longitudinal Investigation of Vocational Exploration). This major study, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., will follow two cohorts of students as well as faculty members from 39 NetVUE institutions. This is expected to be the largest-ever longitudinal study focusing on outcomes related to calling and vocation. This workshop will present highlights from the initial wave of this research effort—with results from faculty, staff, and student participants—and will invite attendees to consider the implications of the data and to ask questions via interactive, roundtable discussions facilitated by all eight members of the LIVE Project team.