By Krista Hughes
NetVUE Director of Resource Development
In late February, Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, hosted a NetVUE Regional Gathering, “Vocation and the Common Good: The Call of Belonging in Community.” Inspired by the most recent NetVUE Scholarly Resource Project volume Called Beyond Our Selves: Vocation and the Common Good, the event brought six of the volume’s contributors to campus to dialogue with Furman faculty members, staff, and community partners. Together, they explored the ways that higher education institutions might advance notions of vocation and calling in ways that take seriously our embeddedness in communities and societies. The gathering drew more than 80 professionals from across our network.
Sessions during the two-day event addressed a wide range of themes. Both a plenary and a panel focused on public history and practices of community remembrance. At these sessions, presenters discussed the importance, the challenges, and the fruits of engaging diverse and sometimes divergent perspectives in collective processes of remembering and narrating difficult local histories. Vocation through community engagement was another theme at the heart of a first-day panel and throughout the gathering.
A closing panel addressed a question that had organically emerged during the event: How do we sustain vocations that centrally involve the long-term work of equity and justice—and how do we equip students for sustainable vocations of the common good, especially in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges like climate change? While there are no quick or easy solutions, all agreed that key ingredients include cultivating communities of belonging and practicing mindful presence and compassion toward others and oneself.
In addition to panels, plenaries, and rich Q&A discussions, participants were invited to engage in one of Furman’s self-guided campus tours, one of which is part of their institutional “Seeking Abraham Project.” This project has sought to trace the university’s historical connections to slavery. Specifically, it focuses on a man named Abraham and the 30 other enslaved persons who worked for the university’s first president and his family on a 1200-acre plantation that is now the Furman campus.
For more on the gathering and its themes, see the Furman Regional Gathering website. Also check out Called Beyond Our Selves: Vocation and the Common Good, which is available to campuses as this year’s NetVUE Big Read. For additional reflections on this gathering, see the blog post by Stephan T. Moore of Catawba College, who participated in the event as part of his campus team.
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