At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education

This book champions vocation and calling as key elements of undergraduate education. It offers a historical and theoretical account of vocational reflection and discernment, as well as suggesting how these endeavors can be implemented through specific educational practices. Against the backdrop of the current national conversation about the purposes of higher education, it argues that the undergraduate years can provide a certain amount of relatively unfettered time, and a "free and ordered space," in which students can consider the kinds of lives to which they are being called. The book is divided into four parts; the first of these explores the broader context within which vocational reflection takes place (attending both to the current state of higher education and to broader cultural trends). The second part examines the contours of vocation from historical, theological, and philosophical perspectives, with particular attention to narrative as a key factor in shaping (and accounting for) one's various callings. Part three considers the relationship between vocation and virtue, both of which encourage the cultivation of good habits with the goal of living a fulfilled and fulfilling life. The last part of the book explores vocational reflection beyond the classroom, suggesting that it can also be sustained through co-curricular activities, programs for community engagement, and attention to a campus's physical features. Concluding with an epilogue that summarizes that various pedagogies of vocation that are developed throughout the book, this book also suggests that vocation may itself serve as a kind of pedagogy by encouraging undergraduates to examine larger questions of meaning and purpose. At This Time and In This Place offers a compelling argument for vocational reflection and discernment in undergraduate education; as such, it represents a significant contribution to the emerging scholarly literature in this field.

Table of Contents:
Foreword - Richard H. Ekman, President, Council of Independent Colleges Preface Vocations of the Contributors Introduction: Time and Place: Why Vocation is Crucial to Undergraduate Education Today - David S. Cunningham Part One: Vocation in the Current Cultural Context Chapter 1: Actually, You Can't Be Anything You Want (And it's a Good Thing, Too) - William T. Cavanaugh Chapter 2: Finding the Center as Things Fly Apart: Vocation and the Common Good - Cynthia A. Wells Chapter 3: Vocational Discernment: A Pedagogy of Humanization - Caryn D. Riswold Part Two: The Contours of Vocation Chapter 4: Places of Responsibility: Educating for Multiple Callings in Multiple Communities - Kathryn A. Kleinhans Chapter 5: Stories of Call: From Dramatic Phenomena to Changed Lives - Charles Pinches Chapter 6: "Who's There?": The Dramatic Role of the "Caller" in Vocational Discernment - David S. Cunningham Chapter 7: Vocation and Story: Narrating Self and World - Douglas V. Henry Part Three: Vocation and Virtue Chapter 8: An Itinerary of Hope: Called to a Magnanimous Way of Life - Paul J. Wadell Chapter 9: Seeing with All Three Eyes: The Virtue of Prudence and Undergraduate Education - Thomas Albert Howard Chapter 10: Commitment and Community: The Virtue of Loyalty and Vocational Discernment - Hannah Schell Part Four: Vocational Discernment Beyond the Classroom Chapter 11: Rituals, Contests, and Images: Vocational Discernment Beyond the Classroom - Quincy D. Brown Chapter 12: Sound and Space: Making Vocation Audible - Stephen H. Webb Chapter 13: Self, World, and the Space Between: Community Engagement as Vocational Discernment - Darby Kathleen Ray Epilogue: In Various Times and Sundry Places / Pedagogies of Vocation, Vocation as Pedagogy - David S. Cunningham

About the Author :
David S. Cunningham is Professor of Religion at Hope College, where he also serves as Director of the CrossRoads Project and of the Klooster Center for Excellence in Writing.

Review :
"The idea of a personal calling or vocation has grown increasingly foreign in contemporary culture, at the expense of notions of success, happiness, and consumption. Creative thinkers at small colleges are reconsidering the crucial idea of vocation, however, and this is the first report on that rethinking. I hope it garners widespread attention and stimulates much-needed new reflection and discussion." --Christian Smith, author of Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood "Essential reading for reminding us of the integrative value of higher education. Toward helping students thrive during college and beyond, Cunningham and colleagues offer critical perspectives on how we can incorporate vocational exploration, reflection, and discernment within the undergraduate experience, and why it is essential that we do so." --Jennifer A. Lindholm, Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, University of California, Los Angeles "What happens when diverse scholars gather to discuss the idea and practice of vocational exploration in undergraduate education? The answer is this brilliant and generative volume. No stone has been left unturned in the analysis of vocation's significance at this cultural moment, its connections to virtue, or its place within and beyond classrooms. The movement to revitalize higher education via vocational exploration will be powerfully strengthened by these fine essays." --Tim Clydesdale, author of The Purposeful Graduate: Why College Must Talk to Students about Vocation