Discern Your Future // Division of Student Affairs // University of Notre Dame

When you graduate from Notre Dame, you likely won’t suffer from a lack of options.

But you might wonder how best to apply your talents and pursue your passions in the world. That’s why the Division of Student Affairs is intentional about preparing you throughout your experience to discern your future. Through the robust resources of the nationally-ranked Center for Career Development, unparalleled Campus Ministry, and team of professionals campus-wide ready to assist you, you’ll find everything you need to prepare for a meaningful professional and spiritual life.

What we mean when we talk about discernment:

Yes, discernment can involve figuring out what career you’d like to pursue. But it’s also a process for decision-making that should take into account both your head and your heart—as well as how your talents can best be used for the greater good.

If we’ve done our job, when you graduate you’ll be better prepared to pursue more than just a job—you’ll be equipped to make balanced decisions about embracing your calling. You’ll be a more reflective individual with one of the most powerful tools at your disposal: the ability to assess yourself and determine what is best for you—mind, heart, body, and soul.

Your partners in discernment

We value discernment so much at Notre Dame that the Division of Student Affairs has created a campus-wide, multi-discipline team that will:

Collaborate to find ways to promote discernment in all stages of your time at Notre Dame.

Promote resources for students to foster reflection, self-assessment, formation, and future career exploration.

Inform you about the diverse discernment resources on campus through faculty and staff involvement and social media.

For more information about this group and its resources, please email Laura Connelly, senior counselor to the vice president for Student Affairs, at laura.connelly@nd.edu.

How is God calling you?

The key to leading a fruitful, joyful, and fulfilled adult life resides in identifying how God is calling you.

The Campus Ministry team can help you discern God’s unique calling through conversation, prayer, worship, and service. This process of self-discovery reaches beyond your career and straight to the heart of who you are and who you can become, whether as a priest, sister, brother, married, or single person.

Discernment begins with you.

The Notre Dame Center for Career Development is dedicated to helping you develop the tools to engage in personal career development to help you better explore diverse career opportunities and discern your true calling.

This way, you will be ready to proactively navigate career transitions encountered over the course of your lifetime.

Discernment is a process that continues even after you’ve chosen a field of graduate study.

With the everyday demands of a Notre Dame graduate degree, it might be easy to lose sight of the future for which you are preparing. That’s where Graduate Career Services can make a difference.

Graduate Career Services resources are focused on graduate student success – helping you to be the best prepared in order to obtain strong career outcomes after your time at Notre Dame. Whether you wish to remain in academics following your degree or explore options in business, government, or nonprofit, Graduate Career Services can help.

Discern your path in service to others.

The Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame, an academic institute and longtime partner of the Division of Student Affairs, offers community engaged learning opportunities locally, nationally, and internationally, as well as guidance to students seeking post-graduate service programs.

Learn to analyze and understand social challenges, confront those challenges in the communities where they occur, and reflect on how the experience brings deeper meaning to your life. At the Center, we are inspired by Gospel values and the Catholic social tradition, and we believe service is integral to discerning your responsibilities and your commitments, now and in the future.