Exploring Vocation Through Academic Avenues

by Eva Westein ’25

The semester before Caroline Van Sistine ’26 began her junior year at St. Norbert College, she was casually investigating potential research opportunities when she stumbled upon SNC’s Summer Undergraduate Research Forum (SURF) website. Intrigued but hesitant, Van Sistine set up a meeting with Deirdre Egan-Ryan (English) to learn more.  

SURF and beyond
Van Sistine ended up pursuing a SURF project with Egan-Ryan called “Narratives of Unfulfilled Calling and Strategies for Vocational Flourishing in Modern Black Literature.” The decision for this subject mainly draws from Egan-Ryan’s own project on unfulfilled calling in black literature and Van Sistine’s inspiration from 20th-century black poets that she had previously interacted with in class, creating a collective endeavor. 

During her time in SURF, Van Sistine narrowed her studies to two main texts, one with a sense of communal vocational calling and one without, accompanied by the task of writing a 20- to 30-page academic paper. In engaging with these texts, Van Sistine and Egan-Ryan proposed that vocation should not be thought about as a singular call and instead look at it as a communal practice, especially for marginalized groups who haven’t been able to experience the call due to various historical hierarchical positions.

Launching such an ambitious project during the eight-week SURF session, the pair quickly realized they would need more time to see it through. “A lot of people who were in SURF had already started their projects, and it was a way to continue over the summer. That was not really the case for us,” noted Van Sistine. Thankfully, Egan-Ryan had mentioned the project to another organization that she had worked with, Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE), and the group opened up the opportunity to continue the project through blog posts. 

To expand on the initial SURF project, Van Sistine looked back to her own experiences with vocation in the classroom during her time so far at SNC. “We ended up proposing this five-part series where we would talk about integrating vocation into the Intro to Literary Studies course, and SURF would be the subject of one of those blog posts as an offshoot of implementing vocation specifically in that class and all of the outgrowths it’s had for me,” she explained. So far, Van Sistine and Egan-Ryan have published blog posts about integrating vocation into introductory courses and finding vocation in life outside of careers. 

Research in the humanities
For Van Sistine, one of the biggest reasons that she was initially unsure about participating in SURF was that she was unfamiliar with large-scale research opportunities for humanities-focused studies. She explained, “I feel like when you think about extended research projects it’s the sciences, psychology, maybe history, but I didn’t really know how that would work with English.”

Reflecting on her own research experience, Van Sistine continued, “It wasn’t like science where you create a procedure and you set up an experiment and you write about it and graph stuff and use the scientific method. There’s no scientific method for English.” Despite this, three total English majors participated in a wide variety of projects during Van Sistine’s particular SURF session. 

The biggest piece of advice that Van Sistine has to offer to students who are interested in pursuing research opportunities but don’t know where to start, especially those in the humanities fields, is to talk to their professors. “I feel like a lot of people are scared to talk to their professors, especially if it’s not about something for their designated class, but they’re here and they’re choosing to teach at a school like this because they want that [connection] too,” she advised. 

Lasting impacts
Looking back at her experience with the SURF program and taking on such a large research opportunity, Van Sistine admits that it wasn’t easy, but it certainly taught her a lot. “I would not have changed it for the world, because I learned so many skills. I learned how to outline a paper that’s that long and not feel overwhelmed. If you had told me freshman year that I was going to write a 30-page paper and feel confident about it the entire time, I would have laughed in your face,” she detailed. 

Van Sistine credits her confidence in learning new skills to the support she received from Egan-Ryan throughout the process. By the end of the summer, Van Sistine felt more confident in herself and the work that she was producing. By participating in undergraduate research, she has grown in several additional areas such as managing large-scale assignments, keeping herself accountable for deadlines and feeling more confident speaking in front of large groups. 

Van Sistine said her biggest take away from this experience is to be willing to try, especially when tackling things you have never done before. “Just try things. I think that’s really one of my big takeaways from college, is just try things. Don’t be afraid. If you don’t like something, that doesn’t mean it’s a failure, you just learn something. And you learn things from being wrong.”

May 5, 2025