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This volume shows how attention to vocation promotes the civic good promised by liberal arts education. The contributors claim their own academic callings and reflect on their practices for fostering students' ability to claim their vocations.
About the author
Kaethe Schwehn is Assistant Professor of English at St. Olaf College.
L. DeAne Lagerquist is Professor of Religion and Chair of the Religion Department at St. Olaf College.
Summary
The idea of ''vocation'' has fallen out of fashion in twenty-first-century America, replaced with careerism and credentialism. Neither go far in answering the weighty questions of meaning and morality that have always been integral to a vocational pursuit. Kaethe Schwehn and L. DeAne Lagerquist offer perspectives from fourteen professors at St. Olaf College on the value of vocation, showing how a focus on one's calling rather than on success or credentials paves the way for the civic good sought by defenders of liberal arts education.
Moving beyond abstract generalities, the essays in Claiming Our Callings exemplify the reflective practices at the heart of liberal arts, for faculty and students alike. Martin E. Marty once said that "The vocation of St. Olaf is vocation,'' and the contributors to this volume draw on their experiences teaching in a range of departments at the College--from biology and economics to history and religion--to reflect on both their calling as professors and their practices for fostering students' ability to identify their own vocations. All are convinced of the continuing value of the liberal arts, particularly in generating exploration of the meaning and purpose of life. These scholars' varied notions of how vocation is best understood and cultivated reveal the differing religious commitments and pedagogical practices present within their college community. Together they demonstrate how the purposes of their own lives intersect creatively with the purposes of higher education and the needs of their students and the world.
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Claiming Our Callings is recommended reading for anyone interested in the future of American higher education, whether that education takes place at a church-related institution or a public university or somewhere else .[The book] does not tell colleges and universities what they should do; it does not pontificate about what ought to be. Instead, and much more valuably, it paints a picture of how one particular institution educates students in a manner that inspires reflection on what could be done or might be appropriate. There is no one model of learning and life that applies to all institutions of higher learning, but this record of St. Olaf's experiences opens an important doorway of imagination for what might be possible elsewhere.
