May 2025
GOOD THOUGHT
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?"
Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference is an aspirational call to action for young people to pursue meaningful lives of substantive and scalable impact. Moral ambition for Bregman is the commitment to eschew a life oriented around personal gain to focus upon solving the world’s most pressing problems. The book is an extended plea to act.
GOOD WORK
In 1995, Alabama became one of the first states to legislate character education. The mandate was simple: ten minutes a day focused on 25 traits. Implementation, however, was left up to individual educators—many of whom, like current University of Alabama professor Ben White, barely noticed its effects.
“I went through school during that time,” White recalls. “And I didn’t notice much of a change.”
The early model treated character as a scheduled lesson or a boxed curriculum. For Dr. David Walker, Director of the University’s Center for the Study of Ethical Development, this approach missed the point.
“Character is not a program,” Walker explains. “Character is everything. Character is the way you do business in a school. It's how you relate to each other.”
GOOD THOUGHT
GOOD READ
GOOD WORK
Get the monthly newsletter in your inbox.
This monthly digest will provide you with articles of interest, examples of character initiatives in higher education, book recommendations, and news about upcoming events.
