April 2025
GOOD THOUGHT
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."
Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional (2023) is an eloquently spare and finely observed novel about a middle aged woman’s quest to make sense of her life and the world around her. The Booker Prize short listed novel, framed as a journal, begins as the main character is retreating from her life—her environmental work and her husband--to an isolated religious community in desolate New South Wales close to her family home she left some thirty years prior after the death of her parents. The woman is not religious, thinks little of God and is perplexed by prayer. The odd choice to take refuge in a community of religious sisters focuses her lurking despair. Unreconciled guilt and grief quietly torment her but she finds an unexpected comfort in the secluded and rhythmic nature of daily life in this community. The woman notes, “The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all. Not having to explain or endlessly converse.” One reviewer called the novel an extended meditative vigil.
GOOD WORK
At Belmont University, the effort to form students of purpose, wisdom, and strong character isn’t an abstract ideal—it’s a lived, campus-wide commitment. Through the Formation Collaborative, Belmont is strategically embedding character formation and whole-person development into every dimension of university life, from academic curriculum and staff leadership to student experiences and institutional culture.
GOOD THOUGHT
GOOD READ
GOOD WORK
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