In her welcome letter to the latest issue of Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing, Suzanne Shanahan invites us into a conversation about the meanings of work.

In this essay, Cristy Guleserian, Executive Director of Principled Innovation at Arizona State University, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, reflects on how we can foster campus cultures that individuals and communities. She asks, "How can we hold strong convictions and practice genuine civility and civic grace? As educators, are we modeling and encouraging humility and openness to ideas, or are we fostering generations more inclined to seek being understood than to understand?"

In this essay, Erhardt Graeff, Associate Professor of Social and Computer Science at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and a faculty associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, considers how to sustain hope and a desire to impact the common good among his engineering students. He begins, "My undergraduates at Olin College of Engineering want to make a positive impact. They see engineering as a career path to building a better world. Their initial theories of change are often naive. But I want them to hold onto the hope of positive impact through four years of equations, prototypes, and internships, and feel like they can live their values wherever their careers take them."

In this essay, James Arthur, the former Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, reflects on civic virtues and higher education. He writes, "The value of higher education should surely be seen in the lives of university students—not only in what they do or which professions they go into, but in what they contribute to society and who they become."

When we talk about cultivating civil disagreement and courage of convictions on and off campus what are signs of hope? What are challenges to overcome?