Talking to students about vocation, with Tim Clydesdale

Bonni [00:00:00] On today’s Teaching in Higher Ed episode number 83, Dr. Tim Clydesdale joins me to talk about why vocation is not a dirty word and how we can all better support our students and navigating college and beyond by talking about vocation.

Production Credit [00:00:18] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:32] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:00:59] I really enjoy having conversations with my students about career, about vocation and I’m excited to become even better at doing this today through today’s guest. His name is Dr. Tim Clydesdale and he’s the author of a number of books including the 20 Something Heart the First Year Out of College Driven Dazed or Disillusioned.

Bonni [00:01:26] And the book that we’ll be talking about today which was published in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press. And that is the Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students about Vocation.

Bonni [00:01:40] Tim has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton and also earned a Master’s degree in Sociology from that institution as well. And he is a Professor of Sociology at the College of New Jersey. Tim, thank you so much for joining me today on Teaching in Higher Ed. Welcome to the show.

Tim [00:01:59] Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Bonni [00:02:01] We really appreciate you accepting the invitation. And I’m very intrigued by this subject we’ve never discussed it on the podcast and the whole year and a half we’ve been running. Let’s start out by defining our terms a bit. What is the difference between talking with our students about their careers and talking about vocation.

Tim [00:02:21] Great question. So careers are something that I think we talked to students a lot and they’re very they’re very much at the at the front of most students minds they’re thinking about either the career they’re planning to go into or they’re thinking about what career they should find vocations a bit different vocation is much broader it’s much deeper and has a much longer kind of intellectual and religious history to it.

Tim [00:02:49] And so it’s really about the type of life you want to lead and the type of person you want to be. And so it’s a broader much broader concept.

Bonni [00:03:00] You mentioned that it has a religious context historically. Does that mean that the conversations are only happening between people who are consider themselves religious or are these conversations can happen and should be happening with even people that don’t consider themselves religious.

Tim [00:03:18] I think the conversations can and should happen with all kinds of people. I do find folks who have a religious orientation find themselves I think already at the beginning is to think about this a bit more.

Tim [00:03:30] But as people hear about the idea more and once they get bad past the the baggage that it has so the one baggage that vocation has is that this is the sort of thing that the people in high school did that weren’t going to college.

Tim [00:03:44] So a vocation is what you know say a carpenter has they were in vocational education and then the other baggage people tend to have is a vocation means you are going to be a priest or a nun.

Tim [00:03:56] And so once you get past those two ideas that seem to confuse people and then they realize that it’s about something much broader than I think they’re much more interested in participating in the conversation.

Bonni [00:04:09] Yeah the tension that I hear a lot is is people just think in their vocation as just careers disguised in a really nice outfit. And then there’s the idea of really what we should be doing.

Bonni [00:04:21] And I should mention I teach at a fairly small liberal arts college so what we should be doing is making people better citizens are making that that we actually ruined college when we start focusing too much on career. I’m sure that you’ve run into those concerns as well.

Bonni [00:04:39] And real actual concerns I think back to just maybe not being mature enough myself to have been as good of a citizen as I yearn to be now. So I think it’s a worthy focus but how do you address those concerns.

Tim [00:04:52] So one of the things that I try to do is to help people see that one careers are something that change significantly over time. A single person is likely to have at least according to Department of Labor estimates at least eight different particular jobs.

Tim [00:05:12] Now sometimes that’s in the same career field. All the way through and sometimes that means radically different sorts of of careers. I think the other reason why I think we need a broader than just career is given the rapid change in the global capitalist society that we live in today.

Tim [00:05:32] You may find yourself at some point not able to find a career that really matches you. You may find yourself in a job for a period of time because you’re just trying to pay bills which is a responsible and good thing to do.

Tim [00:05:46] And it may be that you know the broader sense of who you are isn’t being all that fully expressed in your work and it’s being expressed in many other places in your in your your volunteer work or in your in your care for a family member for example.

Tim [00:06:01] And so that’s why I think vocation is a much better way to talk to students because it captures much more the breath of life as it really lived.

Bonni [00:06:13] Tell me about Katie and Melody – who we get to meet at the very start of your book. And how did they inform the conversation about vocation.

Tim [00:06:23] So Katie and Melody are are two really vivacious young women that I met in the course of doing my research and they were smart kids from relatively affluent backgrounds. They had done the soccer they had done the summer camps. They had been babysitters they were in honors programs they both had gone select selected schools that were connected to their kind of their religious tradition.

Tim [00:06:52] But but more out of once they realized it was safe that they could do so. They were they didn’t want them to be too religious but they decided alright I guess I’ll I’ll go to this this church affiliated campus because it’s not too religious.

Tim [00:07:05] And it seems like a fun place to go. And so what was interesting about them is that melody ended up getting into an honors program that was tied to this Lily Grant initiative to encourage undergraduates to explore ideas of calling and vocation and purpose.

Tim [00:07:23] And so she began with a cohort of other scholars. They called them Lily scholars other first year students who participated in a seminar and did a set of readings together. And they also had to participate in some community service and then in the sophomore year there were additional things that the Lilly fellows had to do certain courses they had to take.

Tim [00:07:44] And this proceeded through the whole four years and the the net cumulative effect of this on Melody’s life was was really quite an astounding difference she went from as she described it being really thinking about a fairly mainstream and relatively consumptive life for a nice house and a good job and being really into clothes as she described it somewhat embarrassingly to thinking about you know there is a world of injustice out there.

Tim [00:08:15] And I know that I’m not the person who’s just going to step out there and solve it. But there is a lot more that I can do to really change change the world and I want to be a part of that. And so she really redirected her life in this wonderful way that we as educators enjoy so much.

Tim [00:08:32] Katie by contrast went to a school that didn’t have one of these sorts of programs. And so her honors fellowship just meant that she had to maintain a GPA and at I think a three point twenty five or better and she did so and she got involved in a sorority and she did some community service to that.

Tim [00:08:51] But the rather privatized view of life and of the world that she entered with was largely what she had when she left. And so she never really had the world broadening sort of experience in education that that melody had. And so that’s why I told the story because these two young women are so very similar at entrance to college. But at the exit they are so so different.

Bonni [00:09:17] And I know that they melody and Katie really help grab your readers then in the beginning and their stories are so compelling in some positive and less than positive ways.

Bonni [00:09:26] But I’d like to just take a brief moment to have you describe the real breadth of the research and especially the lily funded programs that provide the foundation for your research and then your own methodology too.

Tim [00:09:39] Great. So this this initiative that the Lilly Endowment ran was close to a quarter billion dollars that they had invested in these programs the programs were implemented on 88 different religiously affiliated campuses across the United States more than 400 campuses applied for these programs out of about 800 religiously affiliated campuses in the U.S.. So it’s a pretty large initiative.

Tim [00:10:04] The Lilly Endowment approached me and asked me to do a national level evaluation of this initiative. That evaluation I ultimately ended up studying 26 of the campuses we interviewed him about 200 more than 275 students and alumni and a similar number of faculty and staff on these campuses. We did a lot of site visits. We did follow up interviews.

Tim [00:10:30] And so that’s the data that I’m drawing from as I describe Katie and Melody to you.

Bonni [00:10:38] And what were some of the surprises that you had along the way as you began to analyze the data.

Tim [00:10:44] So one of the surprises I guess for me was I had expected all of this conversation about one’s purpose one’s calling one vocation to attract idealistic students and make them extremely idealistic and basically useless.

Tim [00:11:02] They graduated that they would have a harder time trying to negotiate you know the world of office politics and live in a cubicle and pay rent and those sorts of things.

Tim [00:11:13] And what really surprised me was that instead of these students to participate in this having what I call a maladaptive idealism they had something called grounded idealism that is they had their ideals.

Tim [00:11:27] Absolutely. They very much like Melody want it to impact the world in a positive way to bring more justice to some place but they also understood it was going to be a long process it was going to be hard it was going to take them a long time to get there.

Tim [00:11:43] There were going to be setbacks and the world wasn’t going to you know welcome them with with open arms and say hooray you’re here we’ve been waiting for you. So that was one of the biggest surprises to make because I just didn’t expect that roundedness among the students.

Bonni [00:12:00] Before I started teaching more traditional undergrads 18 to 22. I taught in the business world I did corporate training and one of the saddest memories I have is of teaching a group of about a hundred people. It just so happened it was a governmental organization although I don’t think that’s anything unique.

Bonni [00:12:17] I think I could have just as easily heard this comment from someone in a more traditional business environment. I don’t even remember the subject but it wasn’t about this but one of the men in the group of about 100 shared that he didn’t ever get to be himself at work that he came to work and he put on the role that he was supposed to play and he did that all day and then he went home. And that’s where he could be himself.

Bonni [00:12:41] And I thought Oh my goodness spending he’d been there something like 30 years to sign this is this was a long number of decades to have invested one’s self into playing the part of someone else that he thought he was supposed to be.

Bonni [00:12:56] And that that idea where I see so many times not as extreme and that’s an extreme story and we all kind of I thought there wasn’t really a question in there so you don’t necessarily have to respond. I will allowed there to be silence in the room when that happened. But I do see it a little bit with some of the students that I will will mentor during their four years at our institution and then see them go out and a little part of them dies that day.

Bonni [00:13:21] They don’t always because they wanna go out and change the world and they want to go and they have all these great ideas about I want to fight against human trafficking or I wanna go help this and it’s oftentimes tied to Yemen to get all this money and give it away.

Bonni [00:13:38] There’s all these grand ideas. And so this idea of these programs helping students gain a more grounded idealism sounds like such a really positive outcome. I love hearing about that surprise. And now one of the other categories you shared about economists who study the public good. They generally have three types of categories for students who might attend a university. They may be a free rider. They may be a saint or they may be a contingent moralist. And how did those three categories inform our conversations about vocation.

Tim [00:14:15] A friend of mine told me about this research and I found it absolutely fascinating one because it was carried out in many different countries across the European Union and other first world nations.

Tim [00:14:29] And what they found consistently through these these sort of acts kind of game sort of experiments that they would do in many different societies was that about 25 percent of the time you would have students who they called them the Saints.

Tim [00:14:46] They they just they would always sacrifice their own personal gain for the greater good of all the players in this game and on the other side of that you always had say about 25 percent of the folks who were free riders who would consistently take the selfish option and look out for themselves number one.

Tim [00:15:09] And what was interesting then was that the remainder of the 50 percent in the middle were these contingent moral This is what I call them in that if the rules of the game supported a more altruistic outcome they would they would support that as well.

Tim [00:15:27] But if the rules of the game supported kind of lean towards a more selfish outcome they would become selfish themselves. And so they kind of move with the with the with the flow of the current if you will of the game.

Tim [00:15:41] And so as I tied that back to thinking about college students you know I began to realize that you know you have folks like like melty that I was talking about in the beginning who is one of the saintly types who really wants to go out and is willing the kind of sacrifice her life for the greater good which is a wonderful thing.

Tim [00:16:00] And it’s the sort of thing that swells the hearts of educators like me. But where we really need to have more people is in this group of from this group of contingent moralists who realize that we need to support the institutions that are making the saintly lives possible. We need to support the social programs the the charitable groups the various programs that that make it possible for us to have a more humane society and to reach out to those who are hurting and in need.

Bonni [00:16:34] Now I know you looked at a wide range of campuses and that had attempted to implement programs like this and not all of what you found were success stories so what are some of the mistakes that some of the universities who have attempted to develop effective programs to facilitate more conversations about vocation have made.

Tim [00:16:55] The two biggest mistakes that a college or university could make it this one as they could they could design a program that was not organic to their campus they could design something that just didn’t fit the culture of that place it didn’t fit its tradition it didn’t fit.

Tim [00:17:10] The students were there and didn’t fit with the faculty were there. And that’s the first mistake that that a place could make. The other mistake that they could make is in hiring people to facilitate this sort of work is to not get people who had a high IQ that has a high emotional intelligence.

Tim [00:17:30] You’re going to ask people to engage in a conversation about questions of meaning and calling and purpose what moves people at the deepest level and what sort of people they want to become. You need folks that have good interpersonal skills good emotional skills that are just able to talk with a variety of people in a caring and supportive way.

Tim [00:17:49] And at the same time can think about these programs and and help them survive in the complex environment of a college or university. So you need you’d need its skilled leadership as well. So both of those things are essential. And if either one of those wasn’t sprawl it could really hurt the the program quite a bit.

Bonni [00:18:11] We talked about upfront sometimes that tension be high and people that want to focus more on us becoming better citizens as opposed to so much on Vocation so much on career.

Bonni [00:18:22] But some of the hesitancy just comes out of on a more personal level whether or not the person’s aware of that. Where do you see some of the hesitancy coming from professor is that having these conversations with their students about vocation.

Tim [00:18:36] Well I think the hesitancy comes from a couple of places. One it comes from the terminology itself. It’s real important. If you’re going to have this conversation to use terminology to invite people to have this conversation using terminology that works very naturally.

Tim [00:18:51] If you’re asking for example a faculty to help students think through and develop their personal values or their character or their commitment to human service human service or appreciation of the liberal arts faculty you know at least two thirds of can sign on to that. We know that from national data.

Tim [00:19:11] But if you ask them to say help students spiritual develop only one out of three faculty feels like that’s even something they should be doing. So terminologies really important.

Tim [00:19:22] And the thing about these programs that I studied which were on purpose development is that they were about this first set of things they were about personal values character community service understanding liberal arts are really not asking faculty to do something that’s all that different.

Tim [00:19:36] What they’re really asking faculty to do is to say allow this conversation to be as broad as possible allow students to speak out of that out of their deepest identities including their religious identities. In talking about these things because that’s what’s shaping their thinking about this.

Tim [00:19:55] And so I think it’s just a hesitancy for the faculty can have to the terminology itself that can be that can be a big part of this.

Bonni [00:20:04] Back on episode 80 we heard from Dr. Mary Jean Saudelli and she is a Canadian who is not a religious person herself who’s teaching in the Middle East and she talks about how many students that she teaches who are Muslim and who want to express their faith as a part of their education.

Bonni [00:20:23] They do not see those things as separate. And so even the emotional maturity that she showed the emotional intelligence that she showed to say this is important to these people and it’s an opportunity for them to really integrate what they’re learning so that’s helpful kind of no we don’t have to have it all figured out but sometimes when we start to bring up those terms like you mentioned it can seem too insurmountable to do it right.

Tim [00:20:49] Right. Well I think I guess the thing that I would say to family are feeling anxious about this is that one. You also need to understand that students have such extraordinary levels of anxiety at this point in time and that anxiety is due to a number of different causes.

Tim [00:21:05] But I would say stepping back sociologically it’s due to the fact that they’re caught in a riptide a cultural riptide. The one part of the current is saying these are the you know the best four years of your life.

Tim [00:21:16] And you know party as hard as you can and make the most of them and you know take hold of every possible opportunity to live with no regrets. The other side of that current that’s creating the riptide which is going the opposite direction which is saying these four years are incredibly important for your long term kind of health happiness financial solvency and everything else and you need to work work work work work and do the very best you can or you’ll never make it out you know.

Tim [00:21:42] And so that Riptide creates I think a lot of anxiety among students. And and one of the things that I think this conversation can do that can be so helpful and over and over on the campuses that I visited they had faculty and they had staff tell their vocational stories.

Tim [00:22:02] They called them which is just simply a story of how they got to be where they are doing what they’re doing who have been the critical people and how that their path get there because so many students have this myth of the linear path right.

Tim [00:22:17] That somehow you just cut it that everyone goes on this linear path right through college and then they go into this career field and everything that everything’s kind of a straight path and there’s not these hurdles and there’s not these kind of circuitous paths.

Tim [00:22:32] And so when faculty and staff tell their stories and they say well for wildlife that this and then for a while I did that and then I did this and then and then this event happened to my life and eventually this is where I ended up what it is. It gives students a place that are feeling so much anxiety a chance to realize wow my life doesn’t have to fall linear path and I don’t have to have everything figured out.

Tim [00:22:54] Maybe I just need to think about what I want to do usefully and productively for the next couple of years and then continued to think about these questions. So I think that’s such an important thing the faculty can learn.

Bonni [00:23:07] I hear that so much from my students that anxiety you’re describing so well and just this idea that they somehow have it in their head that they’re no wonder we put it in their hands so no wonder they have it in their heads but society constantly asks So what are you going to do.

Bonni [00:23:22] What is your major what are you gonna do with that. And how do they possibly know. And I try to emphasize just how much it is unknown and we can’t know these things so if you’re if you’re not sure yet. Good because you could be like me and be so sure and then be so wrong about the vast majority of what was going to happen in terms of my life.

Bonni [00:23:41] And then even just the timing of it things that I thought I’d get married at the same age my parents got married and I didn’t get married until I was 34. And the list goes on and on of whether timing didn’t work out the way I thought or whether that linear path that you describe did not work out as I thought either and.

Bonni [00:23:58] But it is really a tension I think where because we ask students to choose their major and that seems so tied then it seems like they think there’s a magic formula I get a lot of anxiety around what the major should be to because there’s some students I’ll talk to who feel the tension behind social sciences and really that resonates with a lot of their sense of meaning.

Bonni [00:24:20] But then business they have all the pressure that’s where their parents are telling them to go that’s where they think the job market’s telling them to go and so on. So it’s that’s a lot of of tension I guess that the students experience.

Tim [00:24:34] I think giving students an opportunity to hear our stories can really help step down so much of that tension. I think the other thing that that faculty can do that can be so useful is to also bring in stories as they can.

Tim [00:24:50] I mean if they can bring in alumni that’s ideal they can bring in colleagues from other fields who can tell their stories. That’s great. But I think there’s not a a course out there or a field of study or a professional field out there that they couldn’t at least have some exemplary people’s profiles imbedded into it.

Tim [00:25:12] I mean wouldn’t it be exciting if if you’re you know you’re taking your first intro to biology course you’re taking your first you know intro to management course that you know say every Friday at the for the first three minutes of class the professor profiled some outstanding man or woman in that field who was doing something really innovative really serving the public good in that field that it’s not the things that students typically think about.

Tim [00:25:40] How inspiring that could be than them and how much more freeing that could be to students to hear those things from faculty and begin to think well it’s a biology doesn’t mean I have to be a physician or you know management doesn’t mean I have to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I mean there are so many different things that I can do that. This is a great way to start to kind of cede this conversation with students.

Bonni [00:26:06] I love that idea too because it helps to see how more complex careers are today in the sense of there’s jobs that exist today that didn’t exist five years ago and that it isn’t as simple as what are the between these 10 careers what’s the one that you’re going to pick and if you pick the wrong one you’ll be punished for the rest of your life.

Bonni [00:26:27] But just how much is evolving in the complex deal like you talked about the non-linear path. Well I’m going to be linking in the show notes of course to your book and also to an article that Inside Higher Ed did about your research and your book.

Bonni [00:26:42] I’d also just wonder before we moved to the recommendations segment. Are there any particular institutions that we could post a link to in the show notes that are really inspiring around this area.

Tim [00:26:55] That is a great question and I so wish I could tell you some but unfortunately my institutional review board would would slap my knuckles if I did I promise confidentiality to the individuals I spoke to.

Tim [00:27:08] However there is a an organization that Council of Independent Colleges runs called network for vocation in undergraduate education. At this point there are nearly 200 campuses that pay dues to be a part of this of this organization and when they do then they get access to a Web site that they maintain with a ton of resources including syllabi book discussion guides and movie discussion guides. Other forms of pedagogical aids that you can connect with.

Tim [00:27:41] They offer regional and national conferences and so certainly to those who are in a campus administration you might be listening that would be something you would want to you’d want to think about and see if your campus might want to join that organization.

Bonni [00:27:57] Before we move to the recommendations segment is there anything I haven’t asked you or you haven’t had a chance to share that we’re going to really miss out on if we don’t contribute to this conversation about vocation.

Tim [00:28:08] I can think of one thing that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet which is just when you had these conversations with students. It’s so important to also have opportunities for students to get out of the campus bubble and actually do service that service is local.

Tim [00:28:25] That service might be in the form of an internship whether that service is international or or involves a bit of travel. That was the kind of the other side. So good conversations about these ideas combined with the opportunity to serve various groups of various needy organizations or individuals that really help students think through and clarify what they want to do with their own lives as they left college and university.

Bonni [00:28:56] Thank you. And this is the point in the show which we transition over to each give a recommendation or two or 40 and I’m going to just give one recommendation and it has to do with I mentioned when I spoke with Therese Houston back on episode 77.

Bonni [00:29:13] There was the dark secret about teaching what you don’t know and people might remember me admitting on that episode that I’ll be teaching something I don’t know much about coming in January. And one of the things that I have done is in my own notetaking program which happens to be Evernote but you could do this in whatever digital way you track your ideas.

Bonni [00:29:36] But I have set up a note that it’s real simple ideas: the name of the class and in Evernote I’ve put it as one of my shortcuts so it’s really easy for me to get to I don’t have to go search for things. It’s one click when say open up Evernote and it’s funny. I went to it as I was contemplating what my recommendation would be for people listening today. I went to it and I started reading it and I’m going. I’m a genius. That’s an amazing idea.

Bonni [00:30:04] How did I come up with that because I’ve completely forgot about almost all of them because when I’m going through I did follow one of the pieces of advice that Therese gave which was download five syllabi for the course that you have not taught before to get familiar with it.

Bonni [00:30:20] It’s been a long time since I’ve taught a new course. It’s good it’s healthy it’s good. It’s good to be challenging ourselves in our teaching in this way. But but I would not have been able to recall these ideas when I went to actually develop the curriculum or to actually create the assignments.

Bonni [00:30:37] And it’s just really I’ve just been doing it I’ve been doing it since I got assigned maybe two and a half or three months ago. And it’s just a really nice recording of some some really terrific ideas about teaching this course.

Bonni [00:30:49] So that would be my recommendation even if you’ve taught the class I by the way I do have ideas. Note tabs for classes I’ve taught for ten years now. So I would suggest for any classes that you’re scheduled to teach for the upcoming semester. Once you get scheduled a teacher just have your list of ideas.

Bonni [00:31:07] And every time something comes to your mind or every time you see a video or every time you find an idea from another colleague does it just keep recording them. You don’t have to commit to doing all of them. But I really found that to be a great practice and a great resource that I even forget about until I go back and look at it again.

Tim [00:31:24] That’s a great idea. Now. Mine’s going to seem so much more low tech too many of the great high tech things that you’ve recommended on this podcast since I’ve been listening to it but one of the things that’s so important for good conversations is good food mealtime is one of the few times we actually stop.

Tim [00:31:43] We put away our digital devices. We look each other in the eye and we talk to each other and it’s a moment of deep humanity and increasingly a rare moment in our busy busy lives.

Tim [00:31:55] And so as I thought about the recommendation I would make it’s going to sound funny but it’s a slow cooker with a manual switch arrivals slow cooker with a manual switch and in it you can put anything from cheese dip to to marinara and gather people together for conversation.

Tim [00:32:13] I think because this interview is happening during the holidays I’m thinking about how many times I’ve used it and will be using it still to come. And it really facilitates being able to actually when the when the meal is happening you’re not busy as busy as the cook. And you can really focus on your guests and enjoy the conversation.

Bonni [00:32:33] I am so glad that you recommended a slow cooker. I have had this just complete infatuation. You should see my pinterest board of recipes and a lot of them you’ll notice are now related to slow cookers but I don’t do it so it’s kind of this will be my challenge is to take that away.

Bonni [00:32:51] In addition to all the other wonderful resources you’ve talked about is to take that away and try it. Have you ever tried it on campus or is it something mostly due out of your home.

Tim [00:33:00] This is mostly something I do out of my home but it is something I’m thinking. I have two smaller classes I’ll be teaching in the semester to come and it would be much much more likely to be able to actually carried out the class of 30 a little bit harder in class of 10 and 8. I actually think I might be able to do something in and feed everyone.

Bonni [00:33:21] Yeah that’s fabulous. One of the things that I’m also going to be doing in the coming year is trying out poster sessions it’s something that Doug McKee from Yale has recommended on past episodes and so I’m going to be following his blog and his advice and giving that a go.

Bonni [00:33:39] But I did think it would be nice to have refreshments and so maybe all but it might not be enough have to try this out. Start small I don’t have to start something like start small and just have a meal with you know the fourth members of our family that would appreciate that probably.

Tim [00:33:55] That sounds great.

Bonni [00:33:55] Well I really appreciate all of these ideas and just your ear important contribution to the podcast and just to our community and I just appreciate your time especially because I think you and I are both still on Christmas break and you were willing to come on the show and just share all of this with us.

Tim [00:34:12] Well thank you. Thanks for having me Bonni. Thanks for this podcast I really enjoy it.

Bonni [00:34:17] Thanks once again to Tim Clydesdale for being on the show and for all the great ideas and resources that you shared about talking to our students about vocation. And as usual got my list of reminders here.

Bonni [00:34:31] I would love to have anyone who has yet to subscribe to the e-mail newsletter. What that does is get to a weekly e-mail where you can get the show notes with all of the links included in it including a link to a slow cooker with a manual switch from this week’s episode. And sometimes when I follow through on it most weeks an article about 2000 or productivity I’m apologizing because it’s it’s I’m recording this during the winter break.

Bonni [00:34:59] And let’s say I have been less than regular about my blogging aspect of my role on Teaching in Higher Ed but I’ll be back to my regular weekly blogs here soon. And also if you have any feedback about the show I always welcome those e-mails and the easiest way to do that is probably to go to teachinginhighered.com/feedback.

Bonni [00:35:20] That’ll come right to me. And and by the way subscribing is teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. As always I really appreciate the reviews that you’ve been writing and to the ratings that you’ve been given.

Bonni [00:35:34] Add on iTunes or stitcher or whatever it is you use to listen to the program because it just helps other people find out about the show and we can continue to grow this community and have more people to dialogue with. About teaching in higher ed thanks so much for listening in and I’ll see you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.