Colleen Windham-Hughes
PhD, MDiv, Rector of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary
California Lutheran University
-
Editorial
From the Publisher & Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes, Lamont Anthony Wells
No. 63 · Spring 2026
6 min audio
Wells and Windham-Hughes frame vocation as “ground game” — the practical, public living-out of faith through civic engagement — and introduce the issue’s focus on how Lutheran higher education equips students to repair the world.
-
Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 62 · Fall 2025
Windham-Hughes plays on the shared Latin root of “education” and “seduction” (ducere, to lead) to warn against the No-saying seductions of giving up or condemnation, and to call educators to the riskier Yes of showing up to build third-space communities of truth-telling and hope.
-
Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 61 · Spring 2025
Windham-Hughes uses Fred Rogers’ neighborhood as a living embodiment of a Lutheran understanding of vocation — seeing dignity in each person, offering one’s gifts generously, and trusting that the well-being of the neighborhood is intrinsically connected to the well-being of every neighbor.
-
Institutional Focus
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
No. 61 · Spring 2025
The full NECU statement grounds DEIJ work in Luther’s 16th-century reforms and Lutheran theological claims about the image of God, equal dignity, and the limits of human knowing — offering definitions, Lutheran roots, and calls to action for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, with belonging as the outcome of DEIJ at work.
-
Institutional Focus
Scriptures That Inspire Work for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
No. 61 · Spring 2025
A companion list of biblical verses — from Genesis 1:27 and Galatians 3:28 to Micah 6:8 and Luke 4:18-19 — that grounded NECU’s drafting of So That All May Belong, organized by the four DEIJ commitments and offered as an invitation to share other texts that ground and sustain the work.
-
Institutional Focus
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice [abridged]
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
No. 61 · Spring 2025
A condensed version of the NECU statement that consolidates Lutheran theological grounding for DEIJ and a single combined call to action for Lutheran colleges and universities — offered as a shareable summary alongside the complete document.
-
Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 60 · Fall 2024
Windham-Hughes welcomes newcomers and seasoned colleagues to the conversation, lifts up Mary Elise Lowe’s three Lutheran “whys” for educational access, and commends Rev. Jen Rude’s “Sacred Pause” practice as a way to humanize one another and make opening access both easier and more joyful.
-
Editorial
From the Editor: Vocation as Action in the Affirmative
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 59 · Spring 2024
Windham-Hughes frames vocation as practicing “at the borders of our incompetence” — every small yes to the callings we experience, every effort made in the direction of life, is action in the affirmative — and previews the issue’s essays on diversity, transformation, AI, championship team culture, and dreaming big within and beyond our limitations.
-
Article
Team Culture is Key to Success: Learning from Student-Athletes
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 59 · Spring 2024
On a December weekend in “Championship City” Salem, Virginia, both California Lutheran’s Women’s Soccer Team and St. Olaf College’s Men’s Soccer Team won NCAA Division III national titles. Windham-Hughes talks with coaches, faculty mentors, and student-athletes about how off-the-field team culture — built on trust, relationships, and shared why — translates onto the pitch and into liberal arts and sciences education.
-
Editorial
From the Editor: So That We, Too, May Flourish
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 58 · Fall 2023
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.
-
Editorial
From the Editor: Vocation [in] Disruption
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 57 · Spring 2023
Windham-Hughes introduces the issue’s theme — vocation amidst disruption — previews new features including contributor contact information, a study guide for So That All May Flourish, and invited pieces on reproductive rights, and shares results from the Fall survey of readers.
-
Editorial
From the Editor: Why All This Talk About Vocation?
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 56 · Fall 2022
Windham-Hughes introduces the Fall 2022 issue built around Mark Wilhelm’s keynote “Why all this talk about vocation?” and previews five panel responses, two first-time conference reflections, and companion pieces on Womanist theology — framing vocation as a call not to privilege but to constructive and corrective work that undoes unjust systems.
-
Editorial
From the Incoming Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 55 · Spring 2022
Windham-Hughes introduces herself as incoming editor by reclaiming the root of assess — “to sit by” — and committing to the question “What does this mean?” as she sits with readers in the worth of our work and the universality of vocation.
-
Article
Deep Roots, Big Questions, Bold Goals
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 49 · Spring 2019
Adapted from a presentation to the California Lutheran University Board of Regents, Windham-Hughes reads the title Rooted and Open as both reaching back into the Lutheran tradition and opening forward into a shared future, then unpacks the document’s “called and empowered — to serve the neighbor — so that all may flourish” through the lenses of freedom of inquiry as a third path, vocation-centered education, radical hospitality, and civil discourse oriented toward the common good.
-
Vocation Ground Game: Equipping for Civic Engagement
No. 63 · Spring 2026
Vocation is ground game — what we live out each day in what we do and how we live with others. This issue explores how Lutheran higher education equips students for civic engagement as a practical, public expression of faith and neighbor-love.Featuring a first-person reflection on treaty partnership alongside essays from political scientists at NECU and peer faith-affiliated institutions who gathered at Texas Lutheran University for the Civic Engagement and Faith Perspectives conference in Fall 2025.
-
Vocation: Ethical Leadership
No. 62 · Fall 2025
Drawing from the 2025 Vocation of Lutheran Higher Education Conference at Augsburg University, this issue explores what it means to lead ethically in a changing world. Articles range from Walter Earl Fluker’s keynote call to “wake up running” for democratic futures to reflections on classroom pedagogy, cradle-to-career partnerships, moral imagination, and the very Lutheran practice of holding life and death together.
-
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
No. 61 · Spring 2025
Anchored by the NECU statement So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, this issue presents the full DEIJ document along with an abridged version and a companion list of scriptures that inspired its drafting. Four accompanying essays explore vocation at full stretch, the dignity of work through Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, ministry in the ecotones of faith, and the miracle of mission lived out within real-world limitations.
-
Vocation: Educational Access — Lutheran Roots, Contemporary Practices
No. 60 · Fall 2024
The 2024 Vocational Leaders in Higher Education (VLHE) Conference theme — “Educational Access: Lutheran Roots, Contemporary Practices” — anchors this issue. Conference keynotes and panels reflect on Martin Luther’s 16th-century call to educate both boys and girls and trace its contemporary implications for trustworthy leadership, neighbor justice, paradox, biblical “access,” baptismal affirmation, and belonging in Lutheran higher education.
-
Vocation as Action in the Affirmative
No. 59 · Spring 2024
This issue gathers reflections on vocation as action in the affirmative — from Susquehanna University’s formation of a new Division for Access, Equity & Belonging and a conversation about recruiting diverse students at Augustana to Mark Ellingsen’s case for what the Lutheran Two-Kingdom Ethic entails for affirmative action, Ken Flores on the slow work of transformation, a team essay on the critical role of Lutheran higher education in the age of AI, a feature on the team cultures behind two NCAA Division III national soccer championships, and a process from Augsburg’s Riverside Innovation Hub for dreaming big within and beyond our limitations.
-
So That We, Too, May Flourish
No. 58 · Fall 2023
Drawn from the 2023 Vocation of Lutheran Higher Education Conference theme — “Vocation and the Flourishing of Educators” — this issue gives voice to the tiredness, longing, and hope of staff, faculty, and administrators in NECU institutions. Contributors reframe vocation in an age of burnout, propose Lutheran “third-way” values for measuring institutional success, lift up staff governance and staff flourishing, introduce the Vocare spiritual practice, and witness to the role of lament, decolonizing conversation, and deep sadness in vocations we don’t choose.
-
Vocation [in] Disruption
No. 57 · Spring 2023
Even broken, we are called. Amidst disruption, there is still vocation. Yet vocation looks different in disruption — and for some of us, our vocation has been or has become disruptive, calling out systemic injustice and widespread harm.This issue is devoted to all who are living and working amidst disruptions of various kinds, searching for anchors of meaning and purpose in shifting circumstances. It includes a study guide for So That All May Flourish, a new book on Lutheran higher education, and several invited pieces on reproductive rights in the post-Dobbs era.
-
Why All This Talk About Vocation?
No. 56 · Fall 2022
Why all this talk about vocation? Because, as Mark Wilhelm argues in his Publisher’s keynote, “Lutheran higher education…is vocation-based education” — it is who we are and what we do, even if incompletely, clumsily, and unjustly at times.This Fall 2022 issue gathers Wilhelm’s valedictory address as he retires after decades of service, five responses from across the NECU community (Trelstad, Thasiah, Tucker, Cancienne, Pribbenow), reflections from first-time conference attendees Julius Crump and Madyson Ray, and a pair of companion pieces on Womanist theology from Elli Cucksey and the team of Yolanda M. Norton and Beverly Wallace.
-
Called and Empowered; Learning Love of Neighbor (and Assessed)
No. 55 · Spring 2022
A transition issue of Intersections, marking the editorial handoff from Jason Mahn to Colleen Windham-Hughes and looking ahead to Mark Wilhelm’s retirement as the founding executive director of NECU. The essays gathered here, most adapted from comments at the 2022 NetVUE national gathering, ask “What is the worth of our work?” through institutional practices of assessment and imagination: developmental frameworks for vocational reflection, self-assessment instruments, pandemic-era programming, the long arc of serving the neighbor, and a review of Richard A. Detweiler’s The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs.