Toward a Comprehensive Approach to Personal Vocation

Abstract

Franciscan University of Steubenville (FUS) has established a strategic initiative to help all students identify their unique gifts and gain tools for living their personal vocations on a daily basis and throughout the course of their lives. As a Catholic institution of higher education, FUS is actively building an institutional culture that will enable “an ever clearer discovery of one’s vocation and the ever greater willingness to live it so as to fulfill one’s mission” (John, 1988, para. 58). This paper summarizes various initiatives underway at FUS related to personal vocation formation, especially those related to engaging first-year students. There are three categories of personal vocation development activities that FUS has developed: institutional-level, cohort-oriented, and classroom-based activities. Five of the initiatives described are co-curricular, while four are integrated into for-credit coursework. These different types of student interventions are distinguished both in method and audience but share the same goal of engaging students and empowering them toward a Christ-centered direction in their personal vocation. This paper presents the foundations for personal vocation, arguing for why this topic is essential for a Christian education, and it presents an overview of eight different personal vocation approaches taken at FUS, how each of the approaches have been instantiated, and a summary of their achievements as of the 2021–22 academic year.

Keywords:

• Personal vocation
• student engagement
• Christian identity
• mentorship
• Catholic higher education

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.