The Center for Vocational Reflection's programs and services are meant to be invitations that reach into every aspect of campus life--intellectual, physical, emotional, occupational, social, and spiritual--providing opportunities to help educate the whole person for a lifetime of leadership and service in a global community. The specific purpose of each of the CVR's programs falls into one of the three broader categories below.
Contents
- Students: The first set of programs encourages students to think of their lives in terms of vocation, challenges them to lead full lives of commitment and service, and helps them to consider life-paths in which they can develop and utilize skills and capacities of servant-leadership, including lay and ordained church leadership.
- Faculty and Staff: A second set of programs equips faculty and staff to explore their own sense of calling and nourishes their ability to challenge, guide, and support the faith, career, and life journeys of students.
- Campus-wide: A third set of programs builds on Gustavus' commitments to lifelong learning, community engagement, and ties with the Church by offering a variety of opportunities and resources for alumni, congregations, and other friends of the College to reflect on and more intentionally live out their vocations in and for the world.
- Encouraging students to think about their lives in terms of vocation
- Summer Servant-Leadership Program for students who spend the summer working with an organization that contributes to the common good and enables them to grow as servant-leaders
- Annual Conferences on Vocation
- Parker Palmer, March 2002
- Paul Rogat Loeb and Mary Rose O'Reilley, April 2003
- Jim Wallis, Claudia Horowitz, and Carrie Newcomer, March 2004
- Richard Hughes, Michael Schut, and Judy Gorman, February 2005
- Peter Gomes and Bernice Johnson Reagon, February 2006
- Working for Change Conference, March 2007
- Juliet Schor, April 2008
- Workshops, retreats, and discussion groups for first-year students through seniors on, among other things, life choices, identity, community, vocation
- First-year student "Big Questions" retreats
- Residence hall student staff (Collegiate Fellows) training retreat and in-service training sessions
- First term seminar (FTS) presentations
- "Re-entry Reflections" for students returning from study abroad
- "Politics of Homelessness" FTS class reflection session and dinner/discussion
- January Interim courses
- "Changing the World: Justice, Action, and the Meaning of Life"
- "Stewardship and the Environment: Natural History of California"
- "Creative Expressions of the Sacred Ordinary"
- "Calling of the Professions": Guest speakers, pre-professional seminars and retreats, student-alumni mentoring networks
- Communication Studies majors (junior and seniors) retreats
- Pre-Law speakers and discussions
- "Ministry Exploration" guest speakers
- Post-Internship reflection sessions (with the Career Center)
- Pre-Nursing alternative spring break service trip to Guatemala
- Education Career Exploration J-term reflection retreat
- Mindfulness and Vocation: 8-week mini-course and retreat
- Alumni seminars and workshops
- Equipping faculty and staff to explore their own sense of belonging
- New faculty orientation and mentoring program
- Administrative and staff development workshops, seminars, and reading and discussion groups
- Professional development workshops and discussions in connection with the Annual Conferences on Vocation
- Dinner discussions on personal and institutional vocation
- Church-and-College faculty/administrator retreat
- "Faculty Development in Service-Learning for Social Justice" program
- "Teachers Talking" discussion on intersections of vocation, higher education, and good teaching and learning
- Building on Gustavus' commitments to lifelong learning, community engagement, and ties with the Church
- Opportunities for students working at Christian camps or other church-related organizations to participate in Summer Servant-Leadership Program
- The CVR itself (centrally located "safe space," resources, discernment, communication, program coordination, and assessment)
- Annual vocation conferences / "Vocation Week"
- "The Heart of Gustavus" community conversation
- Longitudinal research study of vocational identity development in college students
- Support for Chapel Apprentice program
- Support for a comprehensive church leadership program
- Congregational "field experience" and mentoring opportunities
- January-term course on vocation and ministry
- Dinner discussions, ongoing prayer/support groups, etc. around issues of vocation and discernment
- "Inside Out: Learning with Passion and Purpose" summer leadership program for high school students
