March 2025
GOOD THOUGHT
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."
The recent publication, Virtue in Virtual Spaces (2024), makes a bold proposition. Authors Louisa Conwill, Megan Levis and Walter Scheirer argue that Catholic Social Tradition offers a road map for reimagining the internet as a force for good in the world. Focusing on social technologies (the internet) and dedicated to the patron saints of the Internet (the late Blessed Carla Acutis and Marshall McLuhan), this concise read turns much of what we assume about the internet on its head. But it also serves as an intuitive primer for anyone puzzling through how to enact Catholic Social Tradition (CST) in our daily lives and institutions.
GOOD WORK
How do you cultivate ethical values and commitments within nursing at a large public university where the students often differ in religious, ethnic, political and socio-economic backgrounds?
Leanne Burke, Associate Clinical Professor and Pre-Licensure Program Director at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), faced this challenge head-on when she arrived on campus. Engaging a diverse student body in conversations about complex moral dilemmas in nursing practice proved difficult.
She struggled to find the right approach.
"Without the baseline understanding that you might have with students from a similar faith tradition or in a small school, I had to learn how to have complex conversations about maternal healthcare, fetal development, loss of life, racial disparities in the healthcare system, and how our beliefs affect where we work," said Burke. "I knew these conversations were vital, but I didn’t want to cause harm."
Then she discovered the Anteater Virtues, a campus-wide initiative designed to integrate intellectual character into the university’s culture.
GOOD THOUGHT
GOOD READ
GOOD WORK
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