Claiming Our Callings Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts

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. The essays in this volume 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 draw on their experiences teaching in a range of departments-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. 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.

Kaethe Schwehn received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She teaches writing at St. Olaf College. Her poetry and prose appear in anthologies and journals such as Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Cresset, and Fiction on a Stick. L. DeAne Lagerquist holds a PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She joined the St. Olaf College faculty in 1988. She has served on the national board of the Lilly Fellows Network of church-related colleges and universities and been a leader in Lutheran higher education.