Vocation at 150: How We Learned to Live on Purpose for the Common Good
Students visit the St. Olaf Piper Center for Vocation and Career in Tomson Hall. Photo by Steven Garcia ’20 
Piper Center Peer Educator Aya Elawad ’26 (left) works with Manabie Harbi Ahmed Harbi ’28. Photo by Steven Garcia ’20 
Piper Center Director Kirsten Cahoon ’98 helps students find what’s next. Photo by Steven Garcia ’20 
Professor of Biology and Director of the Health Professions Committee Kevin Crisp (right) meets with Zadie Martin ’28 in the Piper Center. Photo by Steven Garcia ’20
Students often visit the Piper Center for Vocation and Career for a specific reason: to revise a résumé or cover letter, to apply for a job or an internship, or to prepare for an interview. Yet in conversations with the center’s coaches, students typically explore much larger questions: What is their purpose? How can they express their values in their lives and work?
That’s no accident. Director Kirsten Cahoon ’98 says that one of the priorities of the Piper Center is to help students think more deeply about the shape that their lives will take — a focus not just on a job or career, but on a larger sense of vocation. “We spend time talking with them about their whole selves,” she says. “That includes their backgrounds and lives, their values and abilities, and how all of those things fit together.”
This holistic approach might be uncommon for a typical career center, but it’s fully aligned with St. Olaf’s longstanding emphasis on vocation — and a focus that students will find in every part of their education, from coursework to co-curricular programming. Since the college’s inception 150 years ago, St. Olaf has aimed to give students the tools and mindsets to live purposefully in the service of others and the world.
“We spend time talking with students about their whole selves. That includes their backgrounds and lives, their values and abilities, and how all of those things fit together.”
— Piper Center Director Kirsten Cahoon ’98
To be sure, the way that St. Olaf has defined vocation has evolved since 1874. Then, the word vocation had explicitly religious overtones: families sent their children to St. Olaf in no small part because of its promise to instill the principles of Lutheran Christianity into its students.
That said, St. Olaf’s inclusiveness for the time — welcoming women, immigrants, and farmers — paired with a concept of vocation that was about responding to God’s call in all aspects of life. The founders’ vision helped lay the groundwork for the more expansive view of vocation the college currently emphasizes today.
Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community Director Deanna Thompson ’89 describes St. Olaf’s approach to vocation as both “rooted and open.”
“It’s rooted in a Lutheran Christian understanding, and it’s also open to, and connects with, concepts of vocation in other religious and non-religious traditions,” she says.
As defined by the college, vocation is about who people are called to be, as well as what they are called to do. This includes an individual’s professional identity, but also encompasses family and friendships, community engagements, a relationship with the Earth, a search for meaning, and the pursuit of justice. At St. Olaf, vocation carves a path between practical and idealistic. It is grounded in the real world, but it is also aspirational in its aims.
In some ways, St. Olaf’s emphasis on vocation diverges from the broader culture’s increasing fixation on higher education’s monetary return on investment. While St. Olaf performs well by these measures, it has also remained steadfast in its commitment to consider the less measurable rewards of a life well-lived in community with others.
At St. Olaf, vocation carves a path between practical and idealistic. It is grounded in the real world, but it is also aspirational in its aims.
To help students understand and pursue this vibrant idea of vocation, St. Olaf infuses elements of it kaleidoscopically into its teaching and programming throughout a student’s education.
For example, the Lutheran Center, in partnership with several other offices on campus, offers a “Vocation of a Student Leader” session. Students can also become one of the numerous student Interfaith Fellows who deepen campus understanding of the role that religious identity plays in many people’s lives. Professors, meanwhile, tease out answers to questions of students’ meaningful relationships and to their sense of themselves in the world.
In the coming years, St. Olaf will continue to strengthen the support it offers its students in their pursuit of vocation, says Vice President for Mission Jo Beld. It’s an aim highlighted in the institution’s current strategic plan, which seeks to elevate vocation through expanded opportunities for students to study abroad and away, participate in experiential learning, and engage in guided reflection on their vision and values. “We will take up questions of vocation even more intentionally,” Beld says.
To understand the prismatic ways that students, alumni, and faculty think about vocation in their own lives, we spoke to Oles in an array of different positions and places in their lives to understand what propels them and how they stay true to their values — in their own words.
Click on the links below to read their reflections.
“I try to give an empathetic voice to wildlife, which cannot speak for itself.”
— Todd Wilkinson ’84 * Read his reflection here
“I believe in sharing our lives and vulnerabilities with one another.”
— Lauren Skare Ferry ’17 * Read her reflection here
“I’m always trying to fit each thing that I’m doing into this larger puzzle.”
— Dick Nchang ’25 * Read his reflection here
“I see my life today as interconnected with the work I did then.”
— Pin-Ni (Gloriana) Ye ’24 * Read her reflection here
“I ask students: what are the things that give you life?”
— Associate Professor of Religion Anthony Bateza * Read his reflection here