Jeff R. Brown was a sophomore in a civil engineering program when he suddenly found himself in an anthropology class. It was intriguing enough that he considered changing his major, but he fought those urges and ended up with a degree in structural engineering. Fortunately, this was exactly what was required by math and science education programs in the Peace Corps, so he spent two years on the shores of Lake Victoria, teaching high school physics and learning to speak Swahili. After completing a Ph.D. in civil engineering, he moved to the shore of another large lake, teaching at Hope College and working with its student chapter of Engineers Without Borders to develop water projects in Cameroon. All of this helped him develop a deep appreciation for the liberal arts (known to him at one time as "subjects that do not require a calculator"). Apparently eager to gravitate toward an even larger body of water, he now lives in Daytona Beach, where he teaches engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He keeps hoping that some of his students will accidentally take an occasional anthropology class.
Michael E. Cafferky served for many years as a church pastor, but he often found it easier to talk with people outside the church, and to talk about things that others thought weren't very theological. He found himself being called to work in healthcare management, but this bothered him; he had always assumed that a "calling" was only for pastors and preachers. Those who left these roles to take up another line of work were, it seemed to him, leaving their calling (and perhaps even turning their backs on God). He took the plunge anyway, but he continued to wrestle with the idea of calling; slowly, he discovered that it needn't only be applied to pastors (though it can be), and that it isn't even necessarily found in one's job (though it can be). After twenty years in healthcare administration, he has served for more than a dozen years in higher education-currently as the Ruth McKee Chair for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics at Southern Adventist University. He has come to realize that, at a deeper level, our callings are really mostly about what happens in the lives of the people around us.
David S. Cunningham is an only child, which explains a lot. In his youth, he designed projects and imagined carrying them out by himself, but soon discovered that things like backyard carnivals, pretend towns, and musical theater productions actually required the involvement of other people. He thus learned a variety of techniques for roping his schoolmates into putting his various schemes into action, and then basking in their success as though it were his alone. Comparisons to Tom Sawyer notwithstanding, this disposition has enabled him to run campus programs, organize academic conferences, and edit books of essays written by other people-all of which make him look more essential to these endeavors than he actually is. He did eventually do a few things on his own (degrees from Northwestern, Cambridge, and Duke, followed by writing five books), and is increasingly drawn to academic journalism (reporting on conferences, dabbling in social media, and running a blog). It will be for his audiences to determine whether these endeavors represent a genuine service to the academy, or simply another attempt by an only child to remain the center of attention.
Celia Deane-Drummond had a neighbor in her teenage years who was a scientist, and who told her about her research and her efforts to find a cure for cancer. This encounter solidified her plans to do the kind of science that made a difference. During her undergraduate training at Cambridge, she encountered deeply troubling ethical issues about using live animals in research; she sought to avoid these difficulties by becoming a plant physiologist. But here too she found herself surrounded by complex ethical questions, since new funding was being poured into research on genetically modified crops. After research and teaching appointments in Vancouver, Cambridge, and Durham, she decided that ethical issues were not going to go away (and that she did not want to wait until retirement to think about such things). So she re-trained as a theologian and ethicist at Bristol and Manchester. She is still something of a scientist at heart; her work in theology and ethics remains actively engaged with the natural sciences. She was founding Director of the Center for Religion and the Biosciences at the University of Chester, where she served for ten years; in 2015, she helped to launch a new Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame.
Mark U. Edwards Jr. has been unsure whether his calling-at least so far as his fashion choices are concerned-is drawing him more toward the "buttoned-down" look or to "geek casual." His professional computer programming career began in his undergraduate years with a 16-kilobyte computer that filled a room; his life as a professional historian began in graduate school where "cutting and pasting" was done with actual scissors and tape. At his first teaching position, he taught Western Civ in tweed coat and paisley tie; he then doffed both to teach introductory computer science in a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. At Purdue University, he did his own computer typesetting for his second monograph on Martin Luther; he bragged about this until a reviewer pointed out the many typos. (He decided to allow the publishers to typeset his subsequent books.) He became a professor at Harvard even as his software program For Comment appeared on the cover of PC Magazine. Even a college presidency (at St. Olaf College) and an academic deanship (at Harvard Divinity School) have done little to resolve his ambivalent fashion sense. Nor have they resolved two of his strongest tendencies: to try to trap every error condition, and to point out that to err is human. In the end, he is happy that Someone Else is not only doing the error trapping for us, but also has a broad appreciation for a wide range of fashion choices.
Christine M. Fletcher had one vocational goal growing up: to get out of her small town in Pennsylvania so that she could see the world. Even though she attended college nearby, she was able to make good on her plans by spending her junior year in Vienna. This led to her to switch majors (from political science to philosophy), and to continue work in both these fields while pursuing additional degrees at Somerville College, Oxford. She worked as an investment analyst and a merchant banker (and, for a while, as a professional knitter), then left paid employment behind to become a wife and mother. After her children were grown, she completed a Ph.D. at Anglia Ruskin University, focusing on Dorothy L. Sayers's theology of work; this brought together two of her strongest interests, in theology and in work (both paid and unpaid). This eventually led to writing a book on Sayers, as well as another on the secular vocation of the laity (titled 24/7 Christian). Since 2007 she has been teaching theology and business ethics at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois, where she still does some occasional knitting (but doesn't get paid for it).
Catherine Fobes graduated from Muhlenberg College with a major in psychology-the perfect choice for undergraduates who want to keep their options open as long as possible. Like many of today's students, she knew that she wanted to work with people, but she hadn't been encouraged to do much reflection and discernment about her vocation. She held several jobs throughout her twenties, from a one-week experience at the front desk of a rental car company to a four-year stint in a college development office. After going on a series of silent retreats, she discerned a call to attend Yale Divinity School, studying feminist theology and ethics. While there, a mentor encouraged her to continue graduate work; she soon found herself in Tallahassee, completing a Ph.D. in sociology at Florida State University and enjoying swimming outdoors throughout the entire year. Unfortunately, she has been unable to pursue this latter calling, as she now lives and works in central Michigan. But this has not lessened her appreciation for the meaningful and rewarding work that she has been able to do (despite the cold winters!) with students in her courses in sociology, gerontology, and women's and gender studies at Alma College.
David Fuentes was flung into music by his mother, who was trying to find him something productive to do. At a garage sale, on something of a whim, she bought him (of all things) an accordion. Needless to say, she quickly regretted her decision; still, it was clear that the boy had a knack for music, and that he liked making up his own songs. "How are you going to make a living at that?" she would ask repeatedly. When he got a generous scholarship to Roosevelt University, however, she changed her tune, deciding that if he had made it this far (in spite of all her efforts to discourage him), he might just make it in the world of music. He wasn't sure whether plodding through graduate school at Iowa and Brandeis could count as "making it," but he has enjoyed composing music for theater, television, and the concert hall; most recently, he composed a rock opera in the style of the Beatles on the text of the last act of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He also likes to torture himself by trying to write down some cohesive thoughts about the place of music in human flourishing. All of this activity seems to assuage the concerns of the folks at Calvin College-who, like many people, aren't quite sure what "making it" would look like for a musician. Fortunately, they let him teach there anyway, even though he hasn't won a Grammy. [Yet. - ed.]
Jason A. Mahn financed his seminary education by slinging old shingles from the roofs of houses in St. Paul, Minnesota. An early mentor had told him that he could make a fine professor of theology; he considered that this might be a genuine call, and he took it to heart. Still, he was enjoying his life as a carpenter's assistant, and he often considered moving to Montana and learning that trade. Was that perhaps his true calling? Or was it just a backup plan? In an effort to discern the answer to these questions, he found himself driving not to Montana, but in the opposite direction-ending up in graduate school at Emory University. Since then he authored two books and has written about human choices, divine providence, Christian identity, fate, finitude, suffering, sin, and penance. His other vocations include teaching at Augustana College (in Rock Island, Illinois), editing Intersections (a journal about the vocation of Lutheran higher education), and fathering two sons. When his garage recently needed a new roof, Jason was somewhat disappointed to realize that he would have hire carpenters, rather than doing the work himself-as he might have done had he driven to Montana instead of to Georgia. Before the professional help arrived, however, he stepped momentarily into his previous calling by stripping off all the shingles, leaving an impeccably clean roof.
Margaret E. Mohrmann has spent much of her adult life in a recurring process of vocational reflection and discernment. At a young age, she felt an urge to become a physician, but she didn't examine that urge with much care; she simply moved straight through her studies at the College of Charleston, the Medical University of South Carolina, and Johns Hopkins. She then taught and practiced pediatrics, where her experiences with both patients and students encouraged her to think more deeply about what that earlier "call" to medicine was turning out to mean in her life. The ensuing discernment process soon led her to the University of Virginia for a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Ethics) and to a second career teaching ethics to undergraduate and graduate students at UVA and supervising bioethics programs in the university's medical school. She has recently become Professor Emerita, eager to enter the next round of vocational discernment and content to let it unfold as it may. What has gone before has been rich and surprising; she thus has full confidence that whatever comes next will be equally so.
Jerome M. Organ was blessed with teachers at Catholic schools who reinforced his parents' message that "from those to whom much has been given, much is expected." His journey has been guided by a number of teachers, friends, and mentors, whose seeds of wisdom have sometimes fallen on good soil in his life (at least when he has been able to clear out the weeds and rocks). He went to law school because it seemed to maximize his options; he enjoyed the experience immensely, and was especially gratified by the retreats for graduate and professional students, some of which focused on questions of calling and vocation. After practicing law for several years, Jerry felt called to become a law professor, first at the University of Missouri, then as one of the founding faculty members at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, where he also facilitates vocation retreats for students and alumni. A middle child, Jerry has become a natural consensus-builder and problem-solver, because-well, what other choice did he have? His multiple vocations include being a spouse and a parent of five children, a child and a sibling, a carpool driver and a soccer dad, and someone who likes to find patterns in numbers.
Mark R. Schwehn is a first-born son, as were his father and grandfather. Both of these forebears were parish pastors, so Mark always felt that he was, well, pre-ordained. His grandparents did everything they could to reinforce this sentiment. In high school, Mark began to flee this calling-rather like Jonah (though there were no whales involved). He decided that his grandparents might be willing to accept a compromise, so he decided to become a seminary professor. But when he arrived at Valparaiso University, he fled further still; after pausing to give thanks that the campus was not in the vicinity of any saltwater, he decided to become a college professor in history or philosophy. But even in the absence of shipwrecks and large fish, the earlier call persisted; he soon found himself writing primarily about the academic vocation conceived as a Christian calling. Some reviewers observed that his writing sometimes seemed "preachy"; this probably would have pleased his grandmother. She would also have approved of the fact that two of Mark's three children have been ordained into the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, giving new meaning to the phrase "making up for lost time"-and reminding Mark, once again, that-fish or no fish-our callings have a way of catching up to us.
Shirley Hershey Showalter was given several dolls and stuffed animals as a child. She lined them up on the sofa and alternately preached or sang to them, delighting in their enthusiastic responses. Later, her siblings were drafted into service as her audience, proving to be a greater challenge. Brute force failed to keep them in their seats, but storytelling in imitation of her mother succeeded; thus a teacher was born. Though she grew up immersed in the Mennonite Church, she first understood her calling to teach in school, knowing that she would need to leave Lancaster County, Pennsylvania-the land of nine generations of her ancestors. She attended college in Virginia, continued to graduate school in Texas, and then moved to Goshen College in Indiana. There, she and her husband Stuart combined academic and family life for 28 years, the last 8 of which she served as the Goshen College president. Whether her role was professor, mother, college president, or foundation executive, she followed delight and asked for wisdom. She recently published a childhood memoir; her current project is "Jubilación: Vocation in the Third Act of Life."
