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.
In 2024 the Humanities Program launched Virtuous Education: Integrating the Humanistic Tradition with Character Formation. This initiative is designed to lay the foundations for a permanent and transformative program in character formation here at Providence College. This preparatory work is 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 alliis 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 invites 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 features parallel reading seminars for faculty & staff and for students that will support campus wide conversations about character formation and how character formation can be promoted here at Providence College. Each semester also includes a public lecture on the theme of character formation. And students are encouraged to apply for an Educating Character Initiative Fellowship supporting participation in our current and new immersion experiences designed to foster character development around the world.
Reading Seminars: Fall participants will read Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, and spring participants will 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 is hosting two keynote lectures on character education. This Fall Rob Henderson discusses 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. This Spring Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, discusses 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 are in preparation: a Short-Term Study Abroad course in Venice and a Duc in Altum leadership development course in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming. Up to 12 ECI Fellowships are available to support the participation of exceptional students (see below for the application portal).
ECI Student Fellows
At the heart of the Educating Character initiative is the Educating Character Initiative Student Fellowship. Fellowships are open to all students and provide support for participation in the Humanities Program’s Duc in Altum and Short-Term Study Abroad immersion experiences. Fellows will be chosen based on exceptional potential for reflective leadership and will receive scholarships of up to $2,000 towards immersion experience costs.
In return for this support, ECI Fellows:
Reflect on and practice leadership within the context of one or more immersion experiences under the guidance of Humanities Program faculty and staff.
Produce a photo journal and a reflective essay in response to their immersion experience(s). Journals and essays will be published on the Humanities Program website.
