Rollins Career & Life Planning Earns 2026 Professional Development Award

Awarded through CIC’s Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), the Professional Development Award will support initiatives that foster campus conversations about vocation and strengthen faculty and staff members’ ability to guide students in vocational exploration. Rollins is one of two institutions in Florida and one of 46 nationwide to receive an award through this year’s program, which awarded a total of $972,013.

“This year’s cohort of Professional Development Award grantees continues in a long tradition of staff and faculty members committed to deep engagement with vocational scholarship and resources as they imagine possibilities for future initiatives on campus,” says Robert Pampel, NetVUE director of member engagement. “Projects this year envision collaborations across departments, among student affairs staff, and across the institution to explore vocational ideas and to build moments for and structures around vocational discernment into the core curriculum, advising frameworks, and career service initiatives.”

Rollins’ Career & Life Planning office will launch an initiative to strengthen faculty and staff capacity to support students’ vocational exploration. A steering committee of staff and faculty members, guided by shared readings on vocation, will participate in monthly learning sessions and facilitated discussions to develop shared institutional language around vocation. These activities will feature interfaith and worldview-informed dialogue that will result in practical tools for engaging students across religious, spiritual, and secular identities, with particular attention to groups historically underrepresented in vocation programming. The project will also include a campuswide vocation mapping effort and a campus speaker event. A culminating forum will share insights, showcase new resources, and expand vocational engagement across the institution.

NetVUE is a nationwide network of nearly 350 colleges and universities that supports and enriches vocational exploration and discernment among undergraduate students. As part of CIC, NetVue empowers independent colleges and universities to help undergraduates explore and discern their many callings in life.