During the past few months, I have been giving some thought to the issue of vocation. Many of you know that Wittenberg’s Strategic Planning Task Force spent a good deal of time giving expression to the purpose of a Wittenberg education,
and we all agreed that we should set our sights on helping every student achieve five goals.

The fifth one was this: that our graduates should “develop a sense of vocation.” As I was recently reminded while reading Thomas Cahill’s The Gift of the Jews, the idea of “vocation” or “calling” can be traced at least as far back as God’s calling of Abraham in Genesis 12. But Lutherans claim to give it special meaning.

Luther argued that God called all human beings to serve their neighbors; a teacher, physician, or farmer could contribute to the common good just as effectively as could a pastor. Each of us has a calling, work that we have been put on earth to do to serve other human beings. And each of us is challenged to discover what that calling is, to prepare ourselves for it, and to live it out.

While at Gettysburg College, I was asked to serve on a churchwide committee charged with exploring and articulating the particular vocation of faculty members who teach at the 28 ELCA-affiliated colleges. We instituted an annual conference on “The Vocation of a Lutheran College,” to which each college sends a delegation of faculty members, administrators and a recent graduate.

I’m still on the planning committee, and I found this past summer’s conference at Valpariaso especially thought-provoking. I still recall a sermon by Naomi Strand, the pastor at Bethany College. She described our contemporary culture as one that constantly encourages young people to ask, “what’s in it for me?”

Those of us at colleges like Wittenberg have to help them turn that question around: “what’s in me for it?” The elder among us were reminded of President Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” which among other things led many in my generation to serve in the Peace Corps.

Finding a vocation is discovering what it is in Pastor Strand’s question — that cause, that profession, where we are called to serve— and then what’s in me to make the service successful. To be challenged to find a vocation — not just a job or a career is also to be challenged to take a leap of faith: to believe that the vocation which will be of most service to others will also be most deeply fulfilling to oneself.

How do we help our students find a vocation? When I talk to alumni, I invariably hear stories about relationships with people. “It was Professor Laatsch, Professor Ermarth, Professor Swanger, Professor Veler” — the list could go on and on — “who helped me see what I could do, where I could go, what I was capable of.”

My favorite story comes from John Meier ’69, a member of our board of directors, who said Emil Schuchardt, the custodian who supervised his campus job cleaning Blair Hall, most influenced him. I don’t mean to suggest that our students don’t get vocational direction from the classes they take or from their discussions with fellow students.

But the stories I hear suggest that above all they find mentors, experienced adults who help them sort out critical questions. These mentors spend the time getting to know them, their abilities, their fears and their aspirations. How do we know whether we’re meeting this goal, whether students find their vocation here?

This past year we joined with Capital University and public universities in Ohio in contracting the firm Hardwick/ Day to survey a sample of our alumni. I had already worked with Hardwick/Day on a larger study it had done for all 28 ELCA colleges, and we knew the firm could compare its Wittenberg results to a large body of data it had already collected.

The results were enormously heartening. When alumni from all sorts of institutions were asked, “How ffective was your college in helping you develop a sense of purpose in life?” just over 50% of the graduates of public universities answered “effective” or “extremely effective.”

The percentage for graduates of selective private colleges was 66%; small size obviously has a significant impact. For the ELCA colleges as a group, the number was 74%; we take vocation seriously. And Wittenberg even pulled up the ELCA average; 77% of our graduates said “effective” or “extremely effective.” How does this happen?

Another survey question suggested the answer. “Who, if anyone, did you meet at your college who was a mentor/role model for you?” About 40% of public university graduates had found someone who served as a mentor, about 59% of the selective private college graduates, 62% of ELCA college alumni, and a whopping 76% of Wittenberg graduates.

This means 24% of our graduates never found a mentor, and that’s cause for concern, but I think they, and their predecessors (because some of these alumni have been out 20 years or more) can take great pride in these results. There are certainly many facets to a student’s four years here, but finding a mentor and a vocation comes very close to the heart of it.

Recent graduates will almost surely also point to their experience of community service— a requirement for every graduate — as having a significant impact on their sense of vocation, but I strongly expect that they, too, will come up at future alumni gatherings and talk about Professor Bennett, Professor Taylor, and any number of other Wittenberg faculty who’ve led them to discover their vocation.

Sigmund Freud, not a Lutheran but a thinker whose influence I’m happy to acknowledge, said that we all need to satisfy our desire for love and meaningful work if we are to find fulfillment in our lives.

I like to tell alumni that even though Wittenberg doesn’t make any claims for love, an awful lot of our graduates seem to find their future spouses here.But we do believe that work, to be deeply meaningful, must respond to a vocation, and that Wittenberg can be proud of how its graduates find that vocation here.

— Baird Tipson, president