ECI
Virtuous Education
Integrating the Humanistic Tradition with Character Formation
Contemporary education excels at preparing students for careers. But does it prepare them for lives of virtue and leadership? Many students are hungry for something more: an education that integrates academic, personal, and spiritual development in and beyond the classroom.
During academic year 2024-2025 the Humanities Program organized a new initiative: Virtuous Education: Integrating the Humanistic Tradition with Character Formation. This initiative laid the foundations for the St. Dominic Fellows, a permanent and transformative program in character formation here at Providence College. This year of foundational work was made possible by the generous support of a capacity-building grant from the Educating Character Initiative of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University.
Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere, the motto of the Dominican order, means ‘to contemplate and share the fruits of contemplation with others’—to move from thinking and reflecting into action within a community. Hence the Dominican vocation balances study and communal living with service to others and engagement with the world.
The Virtuous Education Initiative
True education is integrative—an education of the whole person: body, mind, and soul. This means character education must move from contemplation to action—from ideas to physical practice and moral habituation. Hence it must be communitarian, because persons learn and grow within community. Finally, we understand character education as teleological, ultimately serving a higher good and deeper purpose.
The Virtuous Education initiative invited the Providence College community to reflect on character formation and leadership development through conversation in the classroom, with the entire community across campus, and in transformative experiences around the world.
Academic year 2024-2025 featured parallel reading seminars for faculty & staff and for students that supported campus wide conversations about character formation and how character formation can be promoted here at Providence College. Each semester also included a public lecture on the theme of character formation. Fourteen students applied for and received Educating Character Initiative Fellowships supporting their participation in our current and new immersion experiences designed to foster character development around the world.
Reading Seminars: Fall 2024 participants read Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, and spring 2025 participants read Jeffrey Rosen’s The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
Speaker Series: The Humanities Forum hosted two keynote lectures on character education. In fall 2024 Rob Henderson discussed his best-selling memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class — hailed as a masterful examination of overcoming hardship and the ways different institutions contribute (or fail to contribute) to flourishing. In spring 2025 Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, discussed his recent book The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
Immersion Experiences and Leadership Development: Two new immersion experiences were developed and will take place for the first time during academic year 2025-2026: a Short-Term Study Abroad course in Venice and a Duc in Altum leadership development course in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming. In addition, 14 ECI Fellows participated this year in off-campus immersion experiences in the United States and abroad (see below for their essays on their transformational experiences).
ECI Student Fellows
At the heart of the Educating Character initiative was the Educating Character Initiative Student Fellowship. Fellowships were open to all students and provided support for participation in the Humanities Program’s Duc in Altum and Short-Term Study Abroad immersion experiences. Fellows were chosen based on exceptional potential for reflective leadership and received scholarships towards immersion experience costs.
ECI Fellows reflected on character and leadership within the context of their immersion experiences, and afterwards produced photo and video essays and written reflections describing their experiences.
The Humanities Program is pleased to make these reflections available here to our community and the broader public. These student experiences represent a variety of off-campus locations and forms of character development, and they highlight the deeply transformational nature of the Humanities Program’s long-term character formation initiatives.
The Humanities Program’s 2024-2025 off-campus immersion experiences included five immersion experiences representing three categories of focus: (1) the life of the mind, (2) leadership development, and (3) pilgrimage:
The Life of the Mind
Thomistic Institute Intellectual Retreat on the Trinity
Washington, D.C. – December 6-8, 2024
Fellows joined the Thomistic Institute for an Intellectual Retreat on the Trinity at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. Activities included talks from renowned scholars, Eucharistic Adoration, celebration of the Divine Office with the Dominican community, and opportunities for reflection with students and friars throughout the weekend.
ECI Fellows:
Joseph Campione ’28 (reflection with photos)
Nathan Faria ’26 (reflection with photos)
Elizabeth Varous ’25 (reflection, slide show)
The Life of the Mind
Surprised by Joy – C. S. Lewis’s Oxford
Oxford, England – Spring Break, 2025
Fellows joined Fr. Dominic Verner and accompanying faculty members for an in depth consideration of the life, writings, friends, and communal life of C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christian apologists of our time. Participants explored Oxford (the home of Oxford University, J. R. R. Tolkien, St. John Henry Newman, and the Inklings) while reading some of Lewis’s and Tolkien’s greatest stories and essays together at Blackfriars Hall, the home of the English Dominicans of Oxford.
ECI Fellows:
Sarah Devine ’28 (reflection)
Michael Piersall ’26 (reflection, photos)
Leadership Development
Christ in the Desert
Moab Desert, Utah – Spring Break, 2025
Led by Fr. Brendan Baran, Dr. Gary Culpepper, Dr. Patrick Macfarlane, and Fr. Gabriel Torretta, Christ in the Desert emphasized leadership development within the spiritual and intellectual context of the Catholic and Dominican tradition. Participants traveled to the Moab Desert in Utah where they learned outdoor skills, including kayaking and canyoneering, within the context of Lenten spiritual and intellectual reflection and professional leadership development exercises.
ECI Fellows:
Ella Bloom ’27 (reflection)
Charles Hergott ’27 (reflection, video essay)
Mikellen Malloy ’27 (reflection)
Timothy Markee ’27 (reflection)
Katherine Porcaro ’27 (reflection)
The Life of the Mind
Ambition and Beauty in the Eternal City
Rome, Italy – May, 2025
Fellows joined Dr. Iain Bernhoft and Dr. Jiyoon Im and considered the life, politics, and culture of the Eternal City during an intensive two-week immersion into Rome, Italy. Participants read Shakespeare’s Roman plays, visited the Vatican and the Colosseum, saw the ruins of Pompeii and the glories of Michelangelo, and considered how Rome’s political transformations (as Republic, Empire, and Church) shaped the virtues and ambitions of its citizens.
ECI Fellows:
Olivia Barberini ’26 (reflection in preparation)
Donald Simprius ’25 (reflection in preparation)
Pilgrimage
To the Heights – Dominican Saints in Italy
Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Turin, Italy – May 20-29, 2025
Fellows joined Dominican friars, faculty, and fellow students as they traced the footsteps of Dominican saints through the ages and across Italy. Participants visited St. Dominic’s tomb, Fra Angelico’s art, St. Peter Martyr’s skull, and the home of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, and more, all while seeking “the ancient paths” of holiness and friendship with the saints.
ECI Fellows:
Annie Pugh ’28 (reflection in preparation)
Amaya Carron ’27 (reflection in preparation)
