Capital University receives Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) grant

Capital University has received a grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) to help students explore and discover what it means to lead a meaningful life. The year-long university initiative will involve pilot projects within classrooms and experiences for students that will help them gain a whole-person education.

According to an article on Capital University’s website, Nate Whelan-Jackson, who is an associate professor and director of the Signature Learning Program in Religion and Philosophy, and the leader of the NetVUE grant project, is quoted as saying of the project, "This award allows us to better coordinate as staff, faculty, and students to consider what it takes for us to educate for meaningful lives. It allows us to create a space to consider things like what we mean when we want to educate the whole person. This is an important moment in thinking through the purposes of higher education more generally. Clearly, we want our students to be successful in their careers and in their lives. I think it is important that they might also develop a sense of significance as part of this broader project."

Whelan-Jackson hopes the project, which is made up of several smaller-scale projects around campus, will help students find the difference between skill building for a career and preparing for living a rich and meaningful life. He also hopes the projects will help define for the university what it will mean to provide students with a whole-person education, as well as how it hopes to provide education with a purpose.

He said, "Often, and very understandably, conversations about career planning focus on lots of specifically financial considerations. That is very important and does not need to be diminished. I, too, like to buy groceries. We are thinking about vocation as a process of appreciating the relationships in which we are embedded and seeing the process of career planning and selecting majors as part of a broader, personalized project that informs how we understand ourselves within our communities."

Once the project is finished in a year, Whelan-Jackson said, “We will have created and refined a campus understanding of vocation that speaks to practices in the classroom and in different student experience areas.”

For more information about Capital University, visit the school’s website.