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Logo of NetVUE, which has awarded a $100,000 grant to Maryville College

Maryville College awarded nearly $100,000 NetVUE grant to strengthen career preparation, vocational exploration

Key Takeaways

  • Maryville College received a $99,350 NetVUE grant to enhance vocational exploration and career readiness.
  • The initiative aims to strengthen the Significant Practical Experience (SPE) requirement in the Maryville College Works program.
  • Project activities include curriculum revisions, faculty training, community-engagement initiatives, and student storytelling projects.
  • Students will learn how to connect their skills and passions with community needs through internships and real-world experiences.
  • The grant supports a two-year project focused on integrating vocational discernment into the educational experience.

July 2, 2026

Maryville College has been awarded a $99,350 Program Development Grant through the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) to strengthen and expand the vocational exploration and career-readiness opportunities available to students through the College’s signature Maryville College Works program.

The grant, awarded through the Council of Independent Colleges with support from Lilly Endowment Inc., will fund a two-year initiative titled “Locally Rooted, Globally Relevant: Strengthening the Significant Practical Experience at Maryville College.” The project will focus on enhancing the College’s Significant Practical Experience (SPE) requirement, a cornerstone of the Maryville College Works curriculum that gives students opportunities to participate in internships, research projects, creative scholarship and global experiences before graduation.

The funding will support revisions to the SPE curriculum, faculty and staff training, community-engagement initiatives, assessment tools and student storytelling projects designed to help students connect their academic experiences with a deeper understanding of vocation, purpose and calling.

“Because Maryville College Works is a decade old now, we have a really good sense of what parts are working well and what parts of the program are ready for a refresh,” said Dr. Heather McMahon, assistant dean for academic success and project lead. “Thanks to higher education research, we know that internships, Senior Study projects and Study Abroad experiences are high-impact practices that boost student engagement and learning. This grant allows us to build on that strong foundation while helping students think more intentionally about how their education connects to meaningful work and service.”

Established more than 10 years ago, Maryville College Works is a developmental career-preparation program that accompanies students throughout their college experience. Almost all students complete a Significant Practical Experience before graduation, applying classroom knowledge in real-world settings through internships, research, creative projects or global engagement opportunities.

The new initiative seeks to broaden those experiences by intentionally integrating vocational discernment into the process. Project leaders describe vocational discernment as helping students identify the intersection of their talents, passions and values with the needs of the world around them.

“One of the things that students today want is to have a college experience and a career that speaks to the issues they care about,” McMahon said. “They want to know that their work will make a difference in the world. Vocational discernment is the process of helping students find the overlap between the issues they care about, their skills and gainful employment.”

The initiative also reflects the College’s strategic commitment to being “of and for the region” by strengthening connections between students and community partners throughout East Tennessee. Through internships, community-engaged projects and partnerships with local organizations, students will be encouraged to consider how their talents and interests can help meet real community needs.

“It’s important for students to see the benefits of their work,” McMahon said. “Embedding SPEs in the local community allows students to learn about the needs of the community in a way that is humble and authentic. Rather than presuming that we know what our community wants or needs, we can help our students gain firsthand knowledge of our community. This helps students hone in on the issues they want to address and on the kinds of work they want to do.”

Over the next two years, grant-supported activities will include faculty and staff training, community-partner roundtable discussions, campus book clubs and guest speakers focused on vocation and calling. The project also will establish new systems for tracking student experiences and outcomes and create a series of student spotlight videos highlighting vocational journeys and Significant Practical Experiences. The grant period runs from May 2026 through April 2028.

College leaders say the initiative aligns closely with Maryville College’s mission to prepare students for lives of citizenship, leadership, creativity and service.

“The NetVUE Program Development grant funds will allow our institution to reinvigorate the Maryville College Works program by strengthening the Significant Practical Experience (SPE) … embedded within a development model that is aimed to prepare students beginning their first year throughout their first steps after graduation,” wrote Dr. Bryan Coker, president of Maryville College, in a November 2025 letter to support the College’s grant proposal. “The proposed program will integrate community voices into our developmental model by creating opportunities for community agencies and regional experts to join with faculty, staff and students across various venues.”

According to Leah Hadder, assistant director of internships and career services in the Maryville College Career Center, the grant-funded enhancements will deepen a philosophy that already distinguishes the College’s approach to career preparation.

“The concept of career readiness at Maryville College consists of more than just a conversation with an advisor during a first semester or a course requirement item to complete for a degree,” Hadder said. “We open pathways to allow students to consider possibilities for discovering how they can contribute to society and what characteristics make them unique.

“By including topics around purpose, calling and vocation, students go beyond pondering the transactional duties surrounding the idea of a career and think more in transformational terms, such as, ‘What can I create?’ ‘What should I do to enable my abilities to give back to others?’ and ‘What is my role in bettering the environment around me?'”

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”