The University of Notre Dame has received a three-year, $1 million Institutional Impact Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) at Wake Forest University to expand programs focused on student character formation. The grant will be shared between two programs — one designed to integrate character education across pre-professional programs on campus and the other focused on fostering character development and personal transformation in undergraduates participating in a three-year fellowship program.

Notre Dame’s Character and the Common Good program, based in the Center for Social Concerns (CSC), will work with pre-professional programs across campus to integrate character education as a core outcome in nearly 50 existing courses, incorporate character education into college-wide, first-year gateway classes and develop a senior seminar for students from across the schools to ascertain how a commitment to the common good might be actualized in different career pathways. The program will also implement additional faculty-focused character education tools, including establishing a campus working group and hosting annual workshops.

The Character and Common Good program is expected to reach nearly 80 percent of Notre Dame’s undergraduate student population. It will be led by principal investigator Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Center for Social Concerns. She will be assisted by David Go, vice president and associate provost for academic strategy and Viola D. Hank Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and Megan Levis, assistant professor of the practice in the Center for Social Concerns and the College of Engineering.

"The pursuit of justice and the common good requires virtuous citizens so character education has always been central to our work at the Center for Social Concerns," said Shanahan. "Through Virtues & Vocations we're now bringing faculty together from around the country to think about how we cultivate character across pre-professional and professional education. We're already putting what we're learning into practice with the College of Engineering Character and Engineering working group started by David Go and Megan Levis and are excited to expand the collaboration to include other pre-professional programs at Notre Dame."

The Ethics Research Fellowship program based in Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good will share in this funding. Sitting at the intersection of intellectual and moral formation, this program focuses on integrating ethical character-building skills and leadership traits to help students with a passion for research and the common good to develop a clear sense of purpose and a passion for thoughtfully tackling ethically significant issues. The grant will allow the Institute to expand and enhance the program, transforming it from an existing one-year student experience to a more comprehensive, deeply engaging three-year experience.

The three-year fellowships will be offered to more than 40 students and incorporate seminars, workshops, mentoring and experiential learning opportunities, culminating in a senior thesis project that connects their chosen discipline with key concepts in ethics.

The Ethics Research Fellowship program is guided by Meghan Sullivan, Notre Dame’s Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy who also directs the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the University’s Ethics Initiative. She is assisted by Jeff Tolly, assistant director for the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the Institute’s lead for undergraduate fellowship opportunities.

“We’re thrilled to use this grant to expand our undergraduate Ethics Research Fellowship program,” Sullivan said. “Notre Dame students are hungry for the opportunity to study complex research questions in ethics, and to prepare to be the types of leaders who are able to move society forward on these issues. This program will push students out of their comfort zones both intellectually and as leaders, and we cannot wait to see how they grow through the three-year program. ”

This work will play an essential role in advancing the University-wide Ethics Initiative emerging from Notre Dame 2033: A Strategic Framework. The Ethics Initiative aims to establish Notre Dame as a premier global destination for the study of ethics, offering superb training for future generations of ethicists and moral leaders, a platform for engaging the Catholic moral tradition with other modes of inquiry and an opportunity to forge insights into some of the most significant ethical issues of our time.

With support from Lilly Endowment Inc., the ECI awarded $15.6 million in grants to 24 projects among 29 colleges and universities seeking to undertake a substantial and sustained effort to educate character in undergraduate populations across their institutions.

Other universities receiving grants from Wake Forest’s ECI include Harvard University, Purdue University, University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and others.