Vocation, Career Development, & Faith Integration

*First book in the NetVUE series, lays the groundwork for thinking about vocation.
*Later chapters in this book explore different themes and virtues through the lens of vocation.

This book demonstrates that vocation and calling can serve as a new vocabulary for higher education—encouraging faculty and students alike to venture out of their narrow disciplinary specializations and to reflect on larger questions of meaning and purpose.

Chapter 2: Conflicts in our Callings – This chapter may be of interest to faculty thinking more about vocation and advising.
Chapter 3: Called to Tell Our Stories – This chapter talks about the role of exploring stories (both personal and in the literature) in the classroom as part of vocational discernment.
Chapter 5: To Whom Do I Sing, and Why? – This chapter explores vocation in the context of the creative arts.
Chapter 6: Coordination, Community, Covenant – This chapter approaches vocation from a business perspective and explores generally opportunities to integrate vocation in different aspects of a campus.
Chapter 9: Unplugging the GPS – This chapter focuses on undergraduate professional degree programs.
Chapter 13: Good Teaching – This chapter talks generally (across disciplines) about character formation and its connection to vocation in undergraduate education.

Chapter 1: The Change a Difference Makes – This chapter talks about how the author helps students encounter differences by engaging with different texts.
Chapter 3: The Call of Death and the Depth of Our Callings – This chapter models engagement with poetry as part of the themes of exploring vocation.
Chapter 8: The Story of Me – This chapter includes reflections on what the author does in his religion classes.
Chapter 10: Response-ability in Practice – This chapter includes a discussion of the implications of vocational thinking for advising.
Chapter 12: Vocational Exploration as Transformative Pedagogy – This chapter includes examples of very practice assignments that could be used in the classroom as well as a rubric.

The concept of vocation in higher education helps undergraduates explore what it means to live a meaningful life. This volume situates vocation within the context of the common good and emphasizes the interconnectedness of individual life and communal life.

*Print Book* See especially chapter 7: "The Practice of Living with Purpose: Vocation"

In popular culture, vocation is often reduced to adult work or church ministry. Rarely do we consider childhood or old age as crucial times for commencing or culminating a life of faith in response to God's calling. This book addresses that gap by showing how vocation emerges and evolves over the course of an entire lifetime.

*Print Book*

*Print Book* A collection of StoryCorps interviews that demonstrates "how work can be about much more than just making a living, that chasing dreams and finding inspiration in unexpected places can transform a vocation into a calling.

A compilation of texts aimed at helping people think about what it means to "lead lives that matter." Easy to skim and read selectively.

A great book for students who are interested in thinking about vocation.

By meditating on personal examples from the author's life, as well as reflecting on the inspirational life and writings of Thomas Merton, stories from the Gospels, as well as the lives of other holy men and women (among them, Henri Nouwen, Therese of Lisieux and Pope John XXIII) the reader will see how becoming who you are, and becoming the person that God created, is a simple path to happiness, peace of mind and even sanctity.

The emerging adult years constitute a new challenge to individuals, institutions, and cultures. It matters whether emerging adults move through the twenty-something decade on default settings or are well prepared for citizenship and leadership. Focusing on critical features of human development―transformations in thinking, feeling, and networks of belonging―Parks describes the potential and vulnerability of emerging adults and shows how mentors and mentoring environments can provide access to big-enough questions and inspire dreams worthy of engagement with a challenging and complex world.

Koskela carefully distinguishes between "missional calling", "direct calling", and "general calling". Koskela clarifies the relationship between gifts, passions, and vocation even as he offers practical guidance for the process of vocational discernment.

In this beloved classic, Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.

Christian Smith and his collaborators draw on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages 18-23) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole.

The authors define the idea of calling, review cutting-edge research on the subject, provide practical guidelines for discerning a calling at all stages of work and life, and explore what calling will look like as workplace norms continue to evolve

Neighbor Love through Fearful Days is a reflection on pandemics--the Covid-19 pandemic, the accompanying economic collapse, a summer of climate chaos, and the pandemic of white supremacy--as well as on the calling to "serve thy neighbor" and work toward the common good, even and especially in times of crisis.

Drawing widely on the wisdom of saints, sages, and the traditions of spiritual direction, Neafsey describes a path to living in the place, as Frederick Buechner has put it,''where our deep gladness and the worlds deep hunger meet.''