Category: Flourishing

At the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., the question isn’t just what students will do after graduation — it’s who they’ll become, quite consciously. In an age when higher education is often measured by employment rates, St. Thomas is leaning into a different measure of success: whether students leave not just with a degree, but with a sense of purpose. 

Through The Purpose Project, launching this fall, the university is reframing college as a formative journey, one in which reflection, storytelling, and ethical exploration are as essential as more traditional career prep. As the new thinking goes, if all a student takes away from college is an entrée to their first job, they — and the college — have missed the point of higher education.

“I think we fail our students if, when they graduate, all they think college was good for was getting them their first job out of college,” said Christopher Michaelson, professor of business ethics. “But,” he conceded, “we also fail them if we don’t help them get that first job.”

The heart of the new initiative sits in the juncture of that tension between the practical and the profound, at a time when the practical is increasingly under the crosshairs for “return on investment.” Part cultural philosophy, part pedagogical blueprint, The Purpose Project asks a different question than the ones colleges often lead with. The focus is not so much “What career do you want?” but instead “What kind of life are you trying to build?” And then it offers the tools for that blueprint.

From the earliest conception, the project was never meant to be a philosophical silo but a shift in the university’s core culture: a way of weaving reflection and purpose through the fabric of a student’s entire experience. Amy McDonough, chief of staff in the Office of the President, watched this idea take root in the university’s leadership and spread throughout the campus.

“We wanted this to be something that students encounter throughout their time here — not just a one-off retreat or capstone,” she said. “It’s not about putting pressure on students to ‘find their purpose’ in college. That’s too much. Instead, it’s about equipping them to begin the lifelong process of searching.”

The Purpose Project took shape with support from a Lilly Endowment grant and was further strengthened by campus-wide strategic planning, culminating in its inclusion as a priority. University President Rob Vischer allocated institutional support to the initiative, advocating that a St. Thomas education must be more than transactional.

In the process of planning, McDonough and her colleagues began an audit of what was already happening across the university. They discovered that many faculty had been doing work rooted in vocation and reflection. The task then became one of elevation: recognizing that existing work, giving it a common language, and creating a framework that could unify and strengthen it.

Around the same time, a grant through the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University was also awarded to the Office of the Provost to support faculty development around the teaching of virtue and character formation. The initiative focuses on helping faculty explore how virtues such as integrity, empathy, and courage can be integrated into their teaching across disciplines. And it complements other elements of The Purpose Project by reinforcing the university’s mission to cultivate ethical leaders and graduates committed to the common good. 

The touchpoints of The Purpose Project now include a reimagined First-Year Experience course that introduces students to vocational thinking from day one. Sophomore-year retreats, piloted with students from the Dougherty Family College at St. Thomas, are designed to meet students at a mid-college moment when questions of major, direction, and identity converge. For seniors, faculty are working to infuse capstones with deeper reflection on purpose.

Even techniques like storytelling, which might seem tangential to vocation, have been folded into The Purpose Project’s scope. Faculty have partnered with organizations like Narrative 4, co-founded by author Colum McCann and supported by figures like Bono and Sting, to help students tell their own stories. In telling where they’ve come from, students reflect on who they are, who they want to become, and how they want to contribute to the bigger picture. 

“Students come to realize, ‘I can tell my story, and I reflect a little bit about myself.’ And then if you can carry that through, you combine that with what you’re learning and how you want to show up in the world,” McDonough said. 

Still, she was quick to note that the project, with its exercises and skillsets, is meant to feel organic, not imposed. “It’s about recognizing and elevating the work that’s already happening. When you talk to alums, it’s been a distinctive piece of their education,” she said. “This isn’t about adding more to people’s plates. We’re not talking about taking on another minor. This is work that helps you reflect on the rest of your life.” 

A new elective class, designed by Michaelson, the business ethics professor, is one of the most tangible expressions of The Purpose Project. Called “Work and the Good Life,” the course is launching this fall in two pilot sections. The idea had been percolating for years, grounded in Michaelson’s research and personal convictions, as well as research for his book “Is Your Work Worth It?” which explores the intersection of personal fulfillment, ethical responsibility, and professional ambition. The Purpose Project brought together a team of faculty to build the course from the ground up.

Michaelson had long been observing a tension in his students. Many were driven, focused, pragmatic — laser-aimed at securing that first job. But what many lacked, he felt, was space to ask the bigger questions: What is work for? How does it fit into a good life? What responsibilities come with privilege and education?

The course invites students into those questions. Developed with input from faculty across disciplines — chemistry, social work, English, entrepreneurship, and political science — the course is interdisciplinary and intentionally open to students from all majors. One section is dedicated to honors students; the other is open enrollment. But both sections will converge at times for plenary speakers and shared conversation.

Each week, students experience three modes of engagement: a lecture-style session, a small-group discussion, and an asynchronous reflection. Assignments are deliberately experiential and reflective. In one assignment, students interview someone whose job does not require a college degree, seeking to understand motivations and obstacles. In another, they interview a retiree to explore how perspectives on work evolve over time. Throughout, they pursue methods of creating a life path using tools from the world of design thinking, while also building an appreciation of the idea that paths rarely unfold as planned.

The culminating assignment is a letter to a “wise elder”— a parent, mentor, or imagined confidant. In it, students reflect on three fictional job offers, each with its own balance of compensation, passion, and public service. Their task is to justify, in writing, the path they feel drawn to and why. It’s a final exercise in what Michaelson called “asking better questions.”

“I’m not telling students what kind of work they should do,” he said. “I’m helping them ask better questions. That’s the real goal.”

“I’m not telling students what kind of work they should do. I’m helping them ask better questions. That’s the real goal.”

In many ways, the crux of the forward-thinking course lies in a deceptively old-school tool: a physical workbook. Unlike most contemporary digital course materials, this one is tactile. Students write by hand. They fold it open on dorm desks and coffee shop tables. Forming answers this way takes time.

“Research suggests that we learn differently when we actually write by hand,” Michaelson said. “It slows you down. It encourages reflection.” 

The workbook includes single-day exercises and multi-part projects, but perhaps its most endearing quality is its intentional tone. Michaelson likened it to the Dr. Seuss book “My Book About Me,” a fill-in-the-blank childhood journal filled with drawings and declarative statements. (“My favorite food is macaroni and cheese! When I grow up I want to be an astronaut!”)

Michaelson’s own children had copies, and years later, enjoyed the glimpses of their past selves. That’s the spirit he hopes this workbook captures: not to infantilize students, but to offer a keepsake of where they were at this moment in life.

“I hope years from now,” he said, “they look back and say, ‘That’s what I thought I wanted… and here’s what I’ve learned since.’”

It’s all part of the focus on intentional work — with an eye to giving back. While some programs and institutions stress an element of being the best X you can be, St. Thomas, as a school founded in a faith tradition, believes in going a step further and linking your goals towards larger obligation. 

“We don’t say, ‘You can be anything you want to be.’ If you want to be a really good bank robber, well, that might be O.K. in other places, but we’re more judgy than that,” McDonough laughed. “We say, ‘You can be anything you want to be — for the common good.’ It’s also about what you’re bringing to the world. That’s a distinction here.”

Zoe had always wanted to study abroad. When looking at colleges, she was drawn to Lehigh University because of something she saw called “Lehigh360.” As the name suggests, Lehigh360 is an institution-wide initiative that helps students see the world through a broader angle by engaging in high-impact practices, like traveling to different countries, conducting research, or working on real-world problems.  

“That said to me, ‘This school cares about these experiences and the students who want to have them,’” said Zoe, now a rising junior at Lehigh who spent last summer in Africa. “Lehigh360 connected me with an amazing opportunity that literally changed my life.”  

While it continues to accommodate students like Zoe who gravitate towards new experiences, Lehigh360 is also there to inspire the larger number of students who, for whatever reason, do not. Now in its third year, Lehigh360 aims to equip every student at Lehigh with the information, access, and encouragement to pursue projects or programs that can prepare them for life, as well as career. Part database, part marketing campaign, Lehigh360 seeks to fill the access gap around these opportunities by addressing a number of barriers, whether lack of awareness, affordability, or self-confidence. 

“We want all students to have these kinds of transformative experiences, and we want a more democratic, egalitarian process, where any student that comes here should be able to participate in them,” said Michelle Spada, the director of Lehigh360. 

Spada works within Lehigh’s Office of Creative Inquiry, where Lehigh360 was, fittingly, created. Formed out of a desire to have students work on complex problems through open-ended projects, the Office of Creative Inquiry is an academic and non-academic vehicle for digging into big global issues. Its core program is called “Impact Fellowships,” through which students work in small teams and with faculty mentors on a host of global and local issues over two semesters with two to three weeks of on-site fieldwork in the summer.   

Within the Office of Creative Inquiry, Bill Whitney is assistant vice provost for experiential learning programs. Having seen the positive impact of the office’s work on students who engaged, Whitney and his colleague, Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry Khanjan Mehta, were curious about how many of the university’s students were taking advantage of similar experiences on campus. What little information they found proved disappointing. When they asked students and alumni about study abroad or leadership or mentorship opportunities, a lot of them said they hadn’t participated in them; many said they didn’t know about them at Lehigh. 

“It was clear then that we needed a better way of getting all these ambitious, driven, capable students doing things that are outside of just their march to degree, as important as that is,” Whitney said. “That’s what led us to Lehigh360.” 

Whitney said part of the urgency to improve access to high-impact programs and experiences stems from the evidence of their significant educational benefit. Their longer-term benefits, including helping to develop a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life and career, have broad appeal for many worried about the lack of purpose so many young people are reporting. 

As strong advocates of this work, Whitney and Mehta began to convene campus stakeholders and alert them to the gap that existed in connecting students with these evidence-based practices. It was not a tough sell, given the school’s strong history of learning through doing. Best known for engineering, Lehigh’s close affiliation with Bethlehem Steel, once the anchor industry in the region, offered a host of work/learning opportunities that still exist today.  

“There is a historical connection to experiential learning that I think everyone is on board with here, and there are these incredible pockets of signature high-impact opportunities,” said Whitney. “The problem is they exist in totally different spaces, and there’s no connection between them. There’s no common place to find them or learn how to get involved.”

Whitney met with over a hundred campus offices across numerous departments to achieve a significant level of buy-in for a campus-wide effort to organize and promote the many opportunities. They created a director-level position for Lehigh360 and hired Michelle Spada. Spada had previously worked on one of Lehigh’s high-impact opportunities — the Iacocca International Internship, a fully funded program for students who have some level of need — and before that, for an Africa fellowship program at Princeton University.  

Spada said her previous work opened her eyes to the equity and access issues that exist in these programs. “Too often with these high-impact practices, we are just passing students back and forth — those that are really good at writing applications and presenting, those who happen to be bumping into the right people. But what about the others? Do they even know these opportunities exist or how they may get funded for them?”  

Spada said the accessibility issue becomes even more pronounced considering the advantage these experiences have in today’s job market. Employers looking for distinctions beyond G.P.A. are eager to see what kinds of activities or work/learning experiences candidates have had in college. Those who decry Gen Z’s lack of readiness are likely to see working on real-world problems as a protective factor.  

“When you consider that employers are putting an emphasis on these experiences, often over G.P.A., it becomes our responsibility to be much more intentional about them,” Spada said.  

Lehigh360 offers a number of on-ramps to these opportunities, starting with communicating and promoting the benefits of doing something in addition to that “march to degree.” The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them. “We ask students, ‘What excites you? What really lights you up?’” Whitney said. “But we also ask, ‘What problems in the world do you want to help solve?’”

The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them.

In its most basic form, Lehigh360 is an accessible database and a toolkit that students can use to explore what opportunities exist. Students can query a number of different domains, such as travel in a certain part of the world, work internships, research opportunities, and special programs like fellowships or scholarships.  

Students are introduced to Lehigh360 in their first year and reminded of opportunities through different touch points, like academic advising, student-facing services, and classroom presentations. Student “opportunity guides” help their peers with applications and references. The school even offers a pre-orientation Lehigh360 course to get students thinking about these experiences before they matriculate and to widen their perspective of what is possible.  

Sometimes getting a student to participate in activities outside their comfort zone involves more than just providing good information. Roisin, a rising junior at Lehigh, is currently in Edinburgh, Scotland, working for a social enterprise that helps fund small businesses in developing countries. The two-month position follows her previous internship in Uganda, an experience she said she never would have had without Lehigh360.  

“As soon as I got the internship in Uganda, I went straight to Michelle and told her how nervous I was, and she was so helpful,” Roisin said. “She told me about the good experiences other students had had with the same program and showed me the value of doing this in my first year. She told me, ‘You will learn so much, and then you can apply that in everything you do in the three years you’re back at school.’” 

With Spada’s encouragement, Roisin went to Uganda, where she taught English to elementary students, taught the staff to play rugby, and met one of her best friends. “It was the best experience of my life — so far,” she said. 

“My experience last summer really opened up my perspective on the world,” Roisin added. “As far as teamwork and working with people I didn’t know, I just feel like I am so much more of a well-rounded person. I think everyone should be taking advantage of opportunities like these because it has honestly changed me for the better as a person. It has affected my mental health, my happiness.” 

Roisin said the equity focus of Lehigh360 is important to her. She was able to participate in part thanks to being a “Soaring Together Scholar,” which involves a full-tuition scholarship to the university and a $5,000 stipend towards an experiential learning opportunity.  

Spada believes initiatives like “Soaring Together” are small first steps in addressing the financial barriers many students encounter in even considering these programs. She and Whitney are working on leveling the playing field in this regard by connecting students to funding sources and securing paid internships for students who cannot afford to give up outside employment. 

An important part of the equity work involves getting a better understanding of who participates and why. Following up on Whitney’s informal inquiry regarding awareness, Spada has engaged a student research team called “Impact Trails” to do qualitative research to help answer questions, such as “How did you get involved?” and “If you are not involved, what were the biggest barriers?”  

The research itself is a high-impact opportunity for students and another example of how to connect learning to doing in college. “When I hear people talk about their education, I hear a lot about wanting their classwork to translate into action and into what they may want to do for the rest of their lives,” said Taylor, a rising sophomore at Lehigh and a member of the Impact Trails team. “I wanted to conduct research, and when I learned about Lehigh360 from a presentation in my first-year engineering class, I immediately looked at those opportunities.” 

As the research continues, anecdotal evidence suggests Lehigh360 is taking off. Students said most of their friends now look into opportunities on the Lehigh360 website. Alumni lament it did not exist when they were at the school. Whitney said the effort to provide a common platform for the many opportunities that exist for students has faculty and administrators eager to get their programs included.  

Still, he worries Lehigh360, like many initiatives in higher education, may be viewed as the passion of one department, as opposed to the culture of the entire university. The one thing he said he does not worry about is buy-in from the students.  

“The students that come here, or any university, are ready to thrive. They are ready to flourish. It’s our job to help them do that.”

Five years after the onset of the pandemic, concerns about the lasting impact of quarantine on the way students engage with each other and in the classroom linger. For some universities eager to intervene, one promising approach to boosting student interaction is peer-assisted learning.

At Florida Atlantic University (FAU), the Learning Assistant (LA) Program hires and trains undergraduates previously enrolled in a course to support students in subsequent semesters. Opening these new channels of engagement is improving not only the student experience but learning outcomes, too.

“In today’s day and age, students don’t talk to other students in the classroom. They go in, and they’re on their phone; they’re on their laptops,” said Jennifer Bebergal, FAU’s associate dean for academic support and student learning and leader of the LA Program. “This is an opportunity for them to build that connection.”

These connections form on multiple fronts: Beyond bringing in additional support staff, the LA program requires faculty members to redesign their course to prioritize student collaboration. In classes typically involving two-hour lectures, for example, the second half gets devoted to group work. 

In 2001, the University of Colorado Boulder developed the LA “model” in an effort to prepare students to become high school physics teachers, which the state was lacking. From one department at one university, the program has expanded to more than 120 across the country and globe.

FAU’s approach is distinct because the institution designates an administrative office to oversee and expand implementation. It gives stipends to faculty to compensate them for their redesign efforts and enforce cross-campus standards. At most schools, Bebergal said, academic centers or department heads are responsible for their own initiatives, primarily in STEM fields.

Across all institutions, though, three features of the LA Program stay the same: pedagogy, preparation, and practice. Pedagogy refers to training the LAs receive to support other students; preparation happens at weekly meetings between LAs and the professor to improve and tailor instruction; practice is what comes alive in the classroom.

LAs are not meant to teach course material but rather support the learning process. They don’t provide solutions to problems but coach students along the way.

“That’s something that we learn a lot about during our pedagogy sessions — to try to not just give them the answer but more lead them through the thinking and logically arriving at the answer,” said Sebastian Hernandez, a rising junior and repeat-LA. 

Tito Sempértegui, senior instructor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, helps lead the LA Program with Bebergal. As a professor of courses with LAs, he said he appreciates the added support in the classroom but especially how LAs provide unique insight into students’ understanding of the material.

“There’s a barrier between the students and the faculty members that is overcome with the presence of the Learning Assistants,” Sempértegui said. “Students are more likely to talk to them, and they do.”

The relatability of LAs may also help students envision their own success. “They see students who look like them, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity,” Bebergal said. Something as simple as sharing an interest or club with an LA could help students feel more comfortable and capable in class.

Deepened classroom engagement is often the by-product. When relationships become a defining feature of the classroom experience, peers notice each other’s absences. “It builds that sense that the students matter in their experience here, and we care that they’re in class, and we care that they’re learning the material,” Bebergal said.

Connecting with an LA in his first-year math class is what led Hernandez to want to become one himself. He had arrived at FAU hoping to pursue environmental engineering, but the prospect of taking calculus was daunting.

“I had a lot of self doubt that I was actually going to be able to do it because of the math,” he said. “Later I realized that it wasn’t really that I was bad at it or there’s something wrong with math specifically.”

The support of his LA was key. “She helped me a lot, and she made the concepts seem very easy, and she even made it look exciting to the point where I really got into calculus,” Hernandez said. “So I just wanted to do that for other people.”

“She helped me a lot, and she made the concepts seem very easy, and she even made it look exciting to the point where I really got into calculus. I wanted to do that for other people.”

While taking into account anecdotal affirmations, Bebergal and her team assess learning outcomes for students in classes with LAs. As of fall 2022, the DWF (drop, withdrawal, fail) rate in both Calculus I and II had dropped by about half since the introduction of LAs in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Meanwhile, the percentage of students earning As in the courses significantly increased.

Outside class time, LAs offer office hours for students who either can’t make it to the professor’s sessions or prefer the lower-stakes environment of meeting with a peer.

As a student in class with LAs, Hernandez said LA office hours could be even more useful than receiving in-class support. “At least me, I feel a little intimidated to go to my professor’s office hours. I think he’s busy and stuff like that,” he said. Conferring with another student, he said, felt “a lot more welcoming.”

Professors take different approaches to incentivizing visiting LA office hours. In his first semester as an LA, Hernandez said, students could earn extra credit by completing a worksheet and explaining the concepts to their LA outside of class. In another course, attending LA office hours was a requirement baked into students’ final grade.

In addition to the students in the classes, LAs themselves stand to gain from the program. First, it offers paid, on-campus employment for the FAU population, one-third of which is eligible for Federal Pell Grants for exceptional student financial need.

For LAs, teaching also presents its own confidence boost, Bebergal said. “Our new LAs come in really nervous. They have imposter syndrome: ‘Yeah, I got an A in this class, but I’m not going to be able to help others.’” Over the course of the semester and into their subsequent turns in the role, she said, “you just see them grow exponentially.”

LAs aren’t just benefitting from helping students, though. They have more time one-on-one with the professor and their LA peers, too.

Hernandez said he sees the payoff on at least two fronts: “It’s very rewarding to be able to help someone,” he said. “But also, it really solidifies my own learning because I think the final step in mastering a concept is being able to teach it to someone.”

“It’s like a win-win.”

Florida Atlantic University is a member of the LearningWell Coalition. To learn more about the program, please contact Dana Humphrey at dana@learningwell.org.

You can reach LearningWell reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

This is the first in a series of stories on the Educating Character Initiative and the efforts of its member institutions.

Commencement season has come and gone and, with it, higher education’s annual homage to values such as good citizenship, service, and personal integrity. As in their mission statements and matriculation materials, colleges often summon these character virtues, but rarely do they teach students how to incorporate them into their lives. 

As higher education continues its self-reflection amidst an onslaught of external criticism, there is a growing movement to revive the idea of teaching character to college students, though questions abound. What would that look like in the modern university? Does “character” mean ethics? Civic engagement? Holistic learning? And how would the idea take root within a diverse array of institutions?   

The epicenter for this exploration is Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative (ECI), a national network of colleges and universities committed to putting character at the center of higher education. The intra-institutional network is part of Wake Forest’s Program for Leadership and Character (PLC), an undergraduate and graduate-level research, teaching, and learning initiative with a mission to “inspire, educate, and empower leaders of character to serve humanity.” 

In 2023, the program received a $30.7 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to expand its work, $23 million of which allowed it to award grants to other institutions to create or strengthen character education on their campuses. In 2024, the ECI awarded nearly $18 million to colleges and universities in a number of categories, including teacher-scholar grants to individuals and capacity-building and institutional impact grants to institutions. This spring, another $2 million was awarded for teacher-scholar and capacity-building grants, and this summer, the ECI will award the 2025 institutional impact grants, which provide schools funding between $100,000 and $1 million.  

Among those eligible for the funding are public and private research universities, minority-serving institutions, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, military schools, and faith-based institutions. This growing number of grantees has formed the basis of a national learning community, led by staff at Wake Forest, that is a laboratory of sorts for the ways in which character education is interpreted, taught, and internalized in diverse environments. 

“The creation of the ECI has allowed us to catalyze a national movement around character,” said Michael Lamb, executive director of the PLC. “We are not just giving colleges and universities funding. We are giving them the tools and support to educate character in ways that work for them and their unique cultures.”  

Jennifer Rothschild is the director of the ECI and leads the high-touch process that keeps the network humming with what she calls “a parade of consultation.” Grantees, and would-be grantees, participate in webinars, conferences, site visits, and numerous phone calls with ECI staff. A philosopher by training, Rothschild relishes the process that goes into bringing character ideas to life, whether by helping to develop faculty training to incorporate character into courses or giving schools license to be creative and flexible about terms or scholarly definitions.  

“Some of our schools are far along in this work,” Rothschild said. “Others have a need and an idea. Our job is to find the thing that clicks for them. We ask lots of questions: ‘What do your students need? What do you want your students to be able to do and feel? Where are the obstacles to this work on your campus? What are your strengths and expertise?’” 

For Heather Keith, executive director of faculty development at Radford University, the ECI helped sharpen the focus of an existing program called Wicked Problems, where students consider ways to approach intractable issues like climate change and social injustice.  

“Students were learning a lot of discreet skills like problem solving and critical thinking,” Keith said. “But we wanted them to think about these problems in character terms like hope and moral courage.” The grant from the ECI funded a faculty workshop called Active Hope to help students understand how to be part of the solution in ways that, Keith said, “made them feel empowered, not just in despair.”  

Keith said the ECI has provided a community for people doing this work and the chance to be part of something bigger. “I developed a network at ECI that I never had before,” she said. “It feels like there is a revitalization of character in higher education, and ECI is at the forefront of it.” 

Character’s Comeback

To achieve the individualized character education Rothschild describes, the ECI uses what it calls a “contextually sensitive” approach. Avoiding being prescriptive about this work may be the key to reseeding it within higher education, which is both curious and cautious about the concept. 

Avoiding being prescriptive about this work may be the key to reseeding it within higher education, which is both curious and cautious about the concept. 

In an educational environment dominated by credentialling and return on investment, teaching college students to become good human beings may seem as dated as parietals. Character education has been in decline since the mid-century,  as higher education focused more on research and less on teaching and personal development. Campuses became a reflection of a more pluralistic, secular society, which made talking about virtues awkward, if not fraught. And while helping students develop traits like honesty and responsibility may seem universally acceptable, character education has become one more term caught in the crosshairs of higher education’s culture wars.  

“When I first said the words ‘character education’ at my previous public university, people immediately reacted poorly to it because they thought it was code for some kind of agenda,” said Aaron Cobb, the senior scholar of character at the ECI. He noted that the ECI welcomes grantees across the ideological spectrum. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the formation of the student as a whole person.’” 

Additionally, the notion of colleges stewarding personal growth may come off as coddling or indoctrination. Indeed, the lack of a common language around the concept feeds its vulnerability to misinterpretation and is something the ECI is working to address.

In the book “Cultivating Virtue in the University,” Michael Lamb, along with Jonathan Brant and Edward Brooks, helps clarify the meaning of character education: “The aim of character education is not to displace students’ reflective capacity to choose but to equip them to choose wisely and well. As such, character education in universities should not be taken to imply a didactic pedagogy or the undermining of student autonomy, but the opposite. Character education at the tertiary level should be critical and dialogical, with full recognition and encouragement of students’ own moral identity, judgement and responsibility and an emphasis on intellectual analysis and critical engagement.” 

In his work at the PLC, Lamb frequently communicates both the need for character education and the value of it. The Request for Proposal (RFP) for the ECI, which he co-wrote, includes references to a survey administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which found that 85 percent of 20,000 faculty across 143 four-year institutions said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that it is important for faculty to develop students’ “moral character” and “help students develop personal values.” 

In its invitation to institutions, the ECI identifies several desired outcomes for institutions wanting to take this on: “Intentional efforts to educate character can support student wellbeing and flourishing, sustain academic excellence and integrity, promote equitable and inclusive communities, foster good leadership and citizenship, advance career preparation and vocational discernment, and encourage the responsible use of technology.” 

For many colleges and universities throughout the country, these outcomes are even more desirable amidst the youth mental health crisis, disengagement among students, employers’ disappointment in the lack of “well-roundedness” in young workers, and the myriad of practical and ethical issues surrounding the proliferation of generative AI. For others still, the most compelling reason for reviving character in higher education is to stem the erosion of character witnessed by countless examples in everyday life.  

In interviewing over 2,000 students for their book “The Real World of College,” Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner found that most students had a transactional view of college and a preoccupation with themselves. “In general, we found students to be preoccupied with themselves and their own problems, showing little concern for broader communities and societal challenges,” Fischman said.

Fischman believes character interventions can be effective ways of moving students from “I” to “we,” if the initiatives are well-understood and carefully assessed. “We are in need of these programs more than ever. By supporting and connecting them through a facilitated network like ECI, individuals and schools can learn from one another’s efforts, rather than reinvent the wheel. An essential piece of this work is assessment — to understand what’s working so that we can build on the effective approaches.”

Fischman and Gardner, who work for The Good Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are part of a growing thought leadership community around character that includes, among others, the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, the Oxford Character Project, the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, and now the ECI. National funders concerned about the state of character and ethics fuel this work, including the Kern Family Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation, both of which have given millions to Wake Forest and others.  

In issuing its substantial investment in the ECI, Lilly Endowment CEO N. Clay Robbins said, “We are living in a moment of deep cultural and political polarization and increasing distrust of leaders and institutions.” He described the aim of the award as “educating a new generation of morally and ethically grounded leaders to rebuild trust and enhance civic engagements.” 

Character in Action

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the current appetite for character education is the response to the ECI’s RFP. In 2024, its first grant year, the ECI received nearly 140 proposals from institutions across the country. Asked if she was surprised by the reaction, Rothschild said, “Yes, definitely. We hoped for 40 or so proposals, enough good ones to enable the awarding of the funds Lilly entrusted us for that year. What happened was we received an overwhelming number of proposals of exceptional quality.”  

To meet the unexpected response, Lilly awarded an additional $12.4 million in funds, primarily to supplement the 2024 awards. The money went to 18 minority serving institutions, two military academies, one community college, 23 faith-affiliated institutions, 24 public institutions, and five multi-institutional projects. 

The “point people” behind these numbers are a mix of faculty, administrators, teaching and learning professionals, and student affairs personnel. Aaron Cobb, who leads the programming the ECI schools participate in, said he is pleased that almost all of the initiatives are “all-campus” efforts. The eagerness of the grantees and prospective partners to understand and execute on the work translates into continuous contact with ECI staff. Since January, Cobb alone has held 159 total coaching/consultation/prospective partnership meetings, averaging about eight sessions a week. The work has proven fruitful for many, as some schools that received a capacity-building grant have returned with proposals for institutional impact grants this year. 

Rothschild said what she finds exciting about the growing learning community is the energy and ideas people new to the conversation are bringing in. “These are not only traditional character people who are reaching back to Aristotle, though of course we have and love those, too,” she said. “What unites these efforts is an understanding that character is a matter of concern for both the individual and the common good.”  

“What unites these efforts is an understanding that character is a matter of concern for both the individual and the common good.”

Cobb agreed, saying, “I’ve learned so much about character from people who may be doing it under a different name and are teaching me more about what it means.”

For faculty members Ted Hadzi-Antich and Arun John at Austin Community College, the prospect of an ECI grant meant pursuing their passion to bring liberal arts-like reflection to the community college experience through revisions to their general education program. 

“For our students, completing general education is likely to be the only opportunity for the kind of interdisciplinary study they get to reflect upon what it means to be a human being and what kind of human being they want to be,” Hadzi-Antich said.

Character education is just as necessary for the community college population, Hadzi-Antich believes, yet much less available. He noted that when he and John turned to existing research to complete their application, they found plenty of references to four-year institutions but nothing about character in community colleges.  

The capacity-building grant they received from the ECI has allowed them to bring faculty together across disciplines to create curriculum to identify, name, and cultivate character for students in all classes, including math and science. While there was some confusion at first about how to do the work, Hadzi-Antich said there were no concerns about it being well-received. 

“In the community college setting, we see character in terms of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility, and there’s nothing controversial about that,” he said. 

Reflection is a big part of the program Austin Community College is running. “We encourage students to take a step back and ask questions like, ‘Why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve here?’ We can now give these opportunities to community college students, who so deeply deserve it and are very, very open to it,” John said.

Anna Moreland, a humanities professor at Villanova University, had a very different motivation for joining the ECI. Already part of the character community, Villanova, which is an Augustinian Catholic institution, used the grant to form a year-long faculty and staff workshop to understand what was distinctive about educating Augustinian character. The effort was not without its challenges. 

“There were folks on our grant writing team that were worried that the Augustinian values were going to become a subset of the ECI values. And that’s where we had some very serious, very hard-hitting conversations,” Moreland said. 

She said working through this dissonance actually produced the opposite result in the development of five distinctive Augustinian virtues. “This laid the groundwork for the possibility of people at Villanova to contribute in a distinctive way to the educating character conversation, nationally and internationally.” 

The process of discovery may be as inspiring as the outcome. “The effort brought us together in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced at Villanova,” Moreland said. “It was a really profound experience.”

More about the ECI when our series continues.