Honors College is using funds to market’ love of the fact,’ community support
Through a fresh award, the University of Tulsa is attempting to instill values of truth and ethics in its accolades students.
Located in Oklahoma, the university just received a$ 585, 000 offer from the Educating Character Initiative, a initiative of the Lilly Endowment and Wake Forest University, to support software in its Honors College.
” Our goal is to prepare our students for life through cultivating a love of the facts, a spiritual vision and sense of purposefulness, and an appreciation for what is beautiful”, Jennifer Frey, professor of the Honors College, told The College Fix.
The school has two main goals for the offer, according to a news release.
One is to” reinforce the lesson knowledge by improving evaluations, training more university in a character-centered approach to the study of traditional texts, increasing Honors offerings, and expanding the school’s Humane Letters level”.
Honors College courses have a lecture style where students study virtues such as sincerity, courage, patience, and intellect by reading traditional works of literature.
These include old functions like Homer’s” The Iliad” and Plato’s” Symposium”, along with books like Mary Shelley’s” Frankenstein” and modern works by Toni Morrison and Martin Luther King Jr.
The system, according to University President Brad Carson, stands out from other colleges because it combines excellent books with good character development, according to Brad Carson.
” We believe that social and serious study of the great masterpieces of Western civilization is one way of growing in excellent practices of mind—thinking, reasoning, communicating claims —and one method of cultivating our wishes to seek what is real, good, and beautiful”, Carson said in a recent email.
Less: The “irresistible hunger for significant intellectual community” fuels the development of classical initiative.
According to the news release, the grant’s next objective is to “build the infrastructure needed to better connect the Honors College’s student life experience with the curriculum and special mission to teach for character and human flourishing.”
Frey, a philosophy professor who studies moral psychology, virtue, and ethics, told The Fix in a recent email that the grant is being used for two new positions, a service-learning coordinator and a program officer.
” The SLC is like an academic advisor, but for service. Students meet with her one-on-one to reflect on ways that they can give back to the community”, Frey said.
According to the grant proposal provided to The Fix, honors students have an 80-hour requirement for community service after graduation. A meeting with the SLC will help students establish a routine of public service.
Through the grant, university leaders hope to encourage character development in dorms for students.
According to Frey, the program officer’s job is to seamlessly integrate residential life with academic study.
The seminar is not sufficient, she claimed, despite being necessary and an excellent place to develop excellent habits of mind and character. Our program officer collaborates with our faculty to create and execute programming in our dorm where our students reside.
In 2023, Frey stated to The Fix that one of her objectives was to “promote a climate of service to the community beyond the college and the campus.”
The College Fix also contacted the University of Tulsa Honors Student Association last week via Instagram, asking about the grant and the character-building initiative, but received no reply.
Through the Educating Character Initiative grants, several other universities are also developing projects.
According to The Fix, Harvard University researchers are using their grant to research students ‘ character, values, and overall well-being.
At Hope College, a private Christian school in Michigan, another project is being pursued as part of the initiative. According to a College Fix report, college leaders are incorporating the virtues of gratitude and generosity into courses and research projects.
MORE: Wake Forest program helps students build’ moral, civic’ character
IMAGE: University of Tulsa/Facebook
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