Notre Dame receives grant focusing on character development for students
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As part of its broader initiative to increase instruction on ethics, the University of Notre Dame this week announced it has received a $1 million grant to bolster moral instruction.
The grant comes from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University by way of Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.
Notre Dame said in a news release the money will be shared between two programs—one that will integrate character education across undergraduate campus programs and another that will create a three-year fellowship to engage in character transformation for undergraduates.
The first, dubbed the Character and Common Good program, will be run by Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns and work with pre-professional programs around campus. The university said the program will make character education a “core outcome” in close to 50 courses, including college-wide gateway courses taken by all freshman. The Character and Common Good program will also include a senior seminar to focus on how fostering a civic sense of common good looks in practice in different career paths.
Through those classes, Notre Dame says the program will reach nearly 80% of the university’s student body.
The second grant-funded initiative is the Ethics Research Fellowship program, which attempts to give character-building and leadership skills to undergraduates. That program currently has a one-year student experience, but the grant will allow Notre Dame to implement a more engaging three-year experience, the university said.
The Educating Character Initiative awarded $15.6 million in grants to 29 colleges focused on character-development and ethics studies.