I once had the opportunity to serve under a great administrator at my institution that valued and encouraged me to speak up when moved. I definitely felt moved to write this personal insight at the end of the 2023 VOLHE Conference.
The “So that We, Too, May Flourish” Conference, was a refreshing and necessary event for my own vocational flourishment. This opportunity to allow those that support the NECU’s common calling of “Called and empowered to serve the neighbor so that all may flourish” is one of the first opportunities for me to interact with others outside my institution, since the COVID-19 pandemic, and everything that came with it. It allowed me the opportunity to sit among many that value the desire to dismantle systems of oppression that are so entrenched in our society, and even among some of our dear Lutheran institutions. Yes! We do need to be “real” with each other and recognize that those systems are present, even in our own well-meaning institutions. An example of this came up while listening to how some of the attendees shared their own views and definitions about some of our students. No need to get defensive, if we are truly committed to assisting our students, and ourselves, in serving our neighbors so we may flourish with them. This being my second time attending this conference, allowed me the opportunity to recharge my soul and create new connections with other well-meaning folks across our great institutions.
The topics covered during the conference were inspiring and provided hope for a weary DEI advocate. The thought-provoking plenary sessions reminded me that the desire to speak up for others, students and those working with them, is important. I will say that the discernment about burnout, reminded me that this very important topic is probably one that many of our institutions may not be willing to look into. This may be because the concept of asking staff and faculty to do more without looking into what other duties can be stopped, is a tough one. The conversations I had with several attendees demonstrated that this may be an import discussion to have on each campus to minimize burnout and support what we really want to achieve—flourishment for all.
There were other great sessions such as the Talking Circle on Indigenous Issues presented by the Luther College in Regina, Canada, and the Racial Healing Circle presented by Dr. Monica Smith. These sessions allowed participants to dive deep into issues of racial and diversity identity and how they continue to affect us. I felt that these discussions and the burnout issue hit a cord with many attendees. At the end of this gathering, the question is, whether we want to take on the challenges to create significant change or just leave it all on Augsburg’s beautiful campus? What are we really willing to do to enhance true flourishment?
One last thought, authentic connections to others are necessary for all of us to continue to do the hard work that we are doing. It was refreshing to see two of our NECU’s Presidents be present to hear the importance of the topics discussed. Again, the reality is that dismantling systems of oppression and engaging in caring, tough conversations is serious hard work but having gatherings such as this, allow for us to build valuable connections to recharge the soul for this long journey.
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Editorial
From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish
Colleen Windham-Hughes
Windham-Hughes introduces the 2023 VLHE conference theme of educator flourishing, drawing on Dr. Monica Smith’s plenary challenge — “How can we flourish if only some are centered and others are at the margins?” — and invites readers to ground themselves in Us/We, the cover art by Augustana graduate William Hatchet, and join the conversation.
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Editorial
Maintaining Our Lutheran Identity: A Source of Strength
Lamont Anthony Wells
Wells reflects on the well-being of staff, faculty, and administration in Lutheran higher education across four pillars — rest, creativity and innovation, religious diversity and pluralism, and the preservation of Lutheran identity — and addresses the painful reality of Finlandia University’s closure as a reminder of the network’s shared mission.
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Article
A Lutheran Call for Educator Flourishing
Krista E. Hughes
Hughes argues that without educator flourishing there is no student flourishing, traces how an exploitative “passion tax” can distort vocation, and offers seven Lutheran “third-way” value pairings — including Metrics/Grace, Efficiency/Kairos, and DEI/Priesthood of All Believers — to reframe institutional success at NECU campuses.
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Article
Do One Thing: Academic Vocation in the Age of Burnout
Jonathan Malesic
Malesic draws on Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks and Søren Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing to argue that academic burnout is fundamentally institutional — a widening gap between mission ideals and working conditions — and urges colleges to resist “projectitis” by focusing on the one thing that matters most.
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Article
Cultivating Staff Flourishing in Lutheran Higher Education: A Framework for Advocacy and Engagement
Laree Winer
Winer narrates her own “love affair” with Lutheran Higher Education to argue that the heart of the tradition — vocation, de-emphasized hierarchy, and shared humanity — equips NECU institutions to advocate for staff flourishing through data collection, professional development, and ongoing relational commitment.
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Article
Staff Governance at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN
Don Ezra Cruz Plemons
Cruz Plemons describes how staff at St. Olaf, in the wake of a decade of difficult events, have built a three-year, glacier-paced effort toward a Staff Governance model — through affinity groups, the Council for Equity and Inclusion, and the Task Force to Confront Structural Racism — that gives staff a voice alongside faculty and students.
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Article
Vocare: A Spiritual Practice for the Spaces Between
Charlene Rachuy Cox
Cox introduces Vocare, a six-word spiritual practice developed through the Nourishing Vocation Project at St. Olaf, that uses the acronym V-O-C-A-R-E to help individuals and communities honor the spaces “between no longer and not yet” and discern their callings for the common good.
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Article
“A Decolonizing Conversation”: Indigenous Engagement at Luther College at the University of Regina
Marc Jerry, Sarah Dymund
Jerry and Dymund describe Luther College at the University of Regina’s response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — Land Acknowledgments, a Starblanket ceremony, the Project of Heart, an Elder in Residence, and the unedited video conversation with Elder Lorna Standingready that anchored their 2023 VLHE keynote.
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Article
Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose
Deanna Thompson
Thompson, living with incurable cancer, expands Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation to make room for deep sadness — drawing on Arthur Frank, Shelly Rambo, Beverly Wallace, and Ross Gay to argue that practices of lament, including the public lament of Friday Flowers at St. Olaf, open space for gladness, joy, and even flourishing to emerge.
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Article
The Divide Within (Not Between) Liberal Arts and Professional Education
Lake Lambert
No. 24 · Fall 2006
Lambert, then Board of Regents Chair in Ethics at Wartburg College and Project Director for the “Discovering and Claiming our Callings Initiative,” argues that the real divide in higher education runs not between the liberal arts and the professions but within each — between teaching that forms students for callings and teaching that merely transmits content or credential. He calls Lutheran colleges to recover, across both liberal arts and professional disciplines, a shared commitment to vocational formation grounded in the Lutheran tradition.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Robert D. Haak
No. 30 · Fall 2009
Haak frames the issue around the question of Lutheran college identity as formed in distinction from some “other,” introducing essays by Witherup on the Joint Declaration, Reuther on Holden Village, Afzaal on Christian-Muslim dialogue, Dovre on the history of Midwestern Lutheran colleges, Radecke on service-learning, and Ratke on Wilhelm Löhe — each making the claim that the “other” is an essential partner in conversation who helps us know who we are and shape who we will become.
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Article
"Annoying the Student With Her Rights:" Human Life Coram Hominibus; Reflections on Vocation, Hope, and Politics
Caryn Riswold
No. 32 · Spring 2010
Riswold takes a student’s course-evaluation complaint that she had been “annoyed with her rights” about voting as the entry point for reflection on fear of change, mistrust of difference, and right-wing extremist violence—Poplawski, Von Brunn, Roeder, and the Sotomayor hearings. Drawing on Gerhard Ebeling’s reading of Luther’s fourfold relationality (coram Deo, mundo, meipso, hominibus), Brian Gerrish, Alister McGrath, Gustaf Wingren, Philip Hefner, Mary Rose O’Reilley, and bell hooks, she argues that the vocation of the Lutheran college is precisely to “annoy students with their rights” by forming them for socially responsible voice grounded in faith active in love.
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Article
Faith, Understanding, and Action
Paul J. Dovre
No. 10 · Fall 2000
Dovre frames the St. Olaf 125th anniversary—originally read as part of a presentation with the St. Olaf Cantorei and organist Paul Manz—around T.F. Gullixson’s story of an immigrant woman who “turned her face to the west wind” and the 1874 gathering at the Holden parsonage of B.J. Muus, Harold Thorson, O.K. Finseth, K.P. Haugen, and O.O. Osmondson. He weaves Anselm’s “faith seeks understanding,” Harold H. Ditmanson on the universal relevance of Christian faith, and the music of Venatius Honorius Fortunatas, John Rutter, Herbert Brokering, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and John Tavener into a meditation on faith as motive, understanding as modus, and action as consequence, against the “ill winds” of poverty, child homicide, AIDS, and consumer gluttony.
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Article
Why All This Talk About Understanding the Mission of NECU Member Institutions as a Vocation?
Mark Wilhelm
No. 56 · Fall 2022
In his valedictory keynote, retiring NECU Executive Director Mark Wilhelm argues that Lutheran higher education is, properly understood, vocation-based education — outlining four core practices recovered over the past fifty years and naming the constructive and corrective work still to be done, including a fuller embrace of DEIJ and of the diverse vocations of NECU’s 27 institutions.
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Article
The Lutheran Theological Tradition and Recruiting Lutheran Students
Ernest L. Simmons
No. 13 · Winter 2002
Simmons opens with an Abraham-and-Isaac “Windows 98” joke to illustrate the dialectic of faith and learning, then argues that in a new market era of limited religious background, intentional mission and marketing go together. Drawing on Levine and Cureton’s When Hope and Fear Collide for the Millennial Generation born in 1982 and Tom Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith for their GenX parents, he reads “Reclaiming Lutheran Students” survey results showing 86% strong community at ELCA colleges versus 54% at flagship publics and 61% alumni mentoring versus 39%. He then develops three areas where the Lutheran tradition uniquely equips its colleges—community, mentoring and vocation, and the integration of faith and values—using Luther’s “two kingdoms” image of the “Left Hand” (reason) and “Right Hand” (faith) of God, with academic freedom as a product of Ahlstrom’s “Critical Current” in the tradition, and closes with three challenges: recruiting and retaining mentoring faculty, educating church leaders, and reaching potential students and parents.