Apply Visit Give
Apply Visit Give
Apply Visit Give
Apply Visit Give

Project Activities

The main activities we'll be undertaking during the three-year grant period are described below. To learn more about or get involved in one of these activities, see the Get Involved page and our list of upcoming events.

  1. Faculty Learning Communities: We will facilitate one Faculty Learning Community (FLC) per semester. These groups, which will also be open to interested staff and administrators, will provide opportunities to discuss and develop a deeper understanding of intellectual virtues, their status as an educational aim, how they are related to similar cognitive and moral strengths, their wider ethical and civic importance, and their relevance to Ignatian pedagogy and spirituality. They will meet on a biweekly basis. Lunch will be provided at each meeting. Books and related materials will also be provided at no cost to participants.
  2. Course Development and Revision Grants: These small grants will incentivize faculty to revise existing courses or create new courses to incorporate a significant emphasis on intellectual character formation. Course Revision Grants ($4k) will support faculty efforts to build an explicit focus on intellectual character into one or more courses. Course Development Grants ($6k) will support the development of a course that is structured, in terms of its first-order content, around themes and questions related to intellectual virtue, including their wider ethical or civic importance. Grant recipients will be required to participate in a Summer Workshop and to provide a follow-up report and reflection. We plan to offer three Course Revision and two Course Development Grants during each year of the project, for a total of 15 grants. RFPs will be issued in January or February of each grant year, with proposals due in March and decisions being announced in April or May.
  3. Honors Program Spearheading: With the support of Director Jeffrey Wilson, the LMU Honors Program will serve as a foothold and laboratory for integrating a focus on intellectual virtue formation into the undergraduate program at LMU. All sections of HNRS 1000: Introduction to Honors and at least two sections of Honors core courses (e.g. HNRS 1100: Honors Philosophical Inquiry and HNRS 4200: Beyond Good and Evil) each semester will incorporate a significant emphasis on intellectual character formation. And Professor Wilson will infuse an emphasis on our target virtues into the Honors Program in additional ways, including but not limited to: (i) remarks at the annual Honors Orientation; (ii) the Honors website and application materials; (ii) the "Food for Thought" speaker series; (iv) weekly Honors column and newsletter; and (v) ongoing Honors recruitment efforts.
  4. Library Resources and Events: Working with LMU's Hannon Library staff, we will significantly modify or create an additional interactive video module that all First-Year Seminar students will be required to complete. This module will include an explicit focus on the intellectual virtues in the context of information literacy. We will also organize one library-sponsored Digital Citizenship Workshop on related topics, such as "How to Think While Navigating the Information Landscape, ""How to Disagree Well: Intellectual Virtues and Civil Discourse, ""Soft Skills: The Habits of Mind Needed in Today's Workplace, " and "The Virtues and Vices of AI."
  5. Summer Workshops: Held during the summers of 2026, 2027, and 2028, these three-day events will explore the "what, why, and how" of educating for intellectual virtues. They will be an opportunity for us to provide advanced training to faculty and others interested in educating for intellectual virtues. The workshops will also be an opportunity to learn from one another what is and isn't working in our respective pedagogical efforts. Participants will receive a stipend of $3k. All LMU faculty and staff will be invited to apply. All Honors instructors will be encouraged to attend.
  6. Center for Faculty Development Events: The Center for Faculty Development (CFD) at LMU supports a wide variety of faculty initiatives but especially those having to do with improving and innovating pedagogy. We will organize at least one CFD-sponsored talk or panel on teaching for intellectual virtues during each year of the project. These events will also be an opportunity to work with faculty and staff in other programs at the university, for instance, by creating a panel discussion on intellectual virtues and Ignatian pedagogy with colleagues from the Center for Mission and Ministry, the Center for Ignatian Spirituality, and Student Life.
  7. Philosophy Graduate Teaching Fellows Program: These fellows teach a total of seven sections of PHIL 2000: Critical Thinking each year. As part of the graduate teaching seminar in our MA Philosophy program, they will receive training in an intellectual virtues framework and pedagogy and will incorporate an emphasis on intellectual character development into their sections of PHIL 2000. This will include 21 sections of PHIL 2000 over the course of the grant.
  8. Bellarmine Forum: The Bellarmine Forum is an annual program hosted by LMU's College of Liberal Arts and directed by a faculty team who apply to run the program on their chosen theme. During the spring of 2028, we will organize a Bellarmine Forum around the theme of "Intellectual Virtues and the Common Good." In addition to running courses and sponsoring additional campus activities (e.g. lectures and panel discussions), we will also host a one-day conference on this theme. An RFP will be issued internally and to colleagues at other institutions with an interest in the conference theme.
  9. University-wide Lectures: To familiarize the wider LMU community with our project, encourage the internalization of its key aims and values, and inspire participation in its activities, we will host at least one university-wide lecture per year by a leading expert on intellectual virtues and education.
  10. Strategic Conversations: Given the extensive interest in our project at LMU, we will continue to pursue several "strategic conversations" with stakeholders across the university to deepen and extend its impact. This is likely to include conversations with colleagues in the Provost's Office, the Office of Mission and Ministry, the Office of Student Affairs, the Center for Ignatian Spirituality, the University Core Curriculum Committee, and more. We expect these conversations to lead to new initiatives that will extend beyond the grant cycle.
  11. Production and Dissemination of Resources: In an effort to support the wider character education community, we will develop and make freely available a wide array of resources, including the following:
    • A refreshed and updated version of the expansive intellectualvirtues.org website (which Baehr moderates), including a new section hosting video and print resources for instructors and administrators at colleges and universities.
    • An Educating for Intellectual Virtues Framework that will be useful to educators at other institutions. The framework will be a concise (20-25 pp.), easy to read, well-illustrated, and nicely formatted distillation of why and how to educate for intellectual virtues in a post-secondary context. Once completed, this framework will be available on the ICI and intellectualvirtues.org websites.
    • At least one scholarly paper on intellectual character formation and the aims of Ignatian pedagogy and spirituality. While the thesis of the paper is still to be determined, it will explore resonances between these approaches and identify implications for educational practice at Jesuit colleges and universities. We intend to use this paper to seed conversations about educating for intellectual virtues at other institutions in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (another of the "strategic conversations" noted above).
    • One or more public-facing essays on the importance of educating for intellectual virtues in our current technological and political environment, which we expect to reach and appeal to a wide range of academic institutions.
    • An online module consisting of multiple short videos and corresponding exercises and assessments that can be utilized by instructors at a wide variety of colleges and universities. The videos will address the nature and value of intellectual virtues (including their broader ethical, civic, and vocational value). We will also develop short videos on each of the "Virtues of the Lion Mind" (viz. curiosity, humility, open-mindedness, courage, and perseverance). In addition to the videos, the module will include easy-to-use assessments and self-reflection assignments that will encourage students to apply what they've learned from the videos to their own experience and identities as thinkers and learners. The module will be available on the ICI and intellectualvirtues.org websites.
    • A series of videos that can be used to train college and university instructors to teach for intellectual virtues. Video topics (corresponding to the structure of Baehr's book Deep in Thought) will include: (i) "Intellectual Virtues and the Aims of Education"; (ii) "The Principles of Educating for IV"; (iii) "The Postures of Educating for IV"; and (iv) "The Practices of Educating for IV." These videos will also be available on the ICI and intellectualvirtues.org websites.