Archives: Newsletter Post
Considering Generosity in Higher Education
As we release the next issue of Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing, we want to highlight a reflection by Middlebury College president Laurie Patton on “Generosity in Everyday Academic Life.” Patton writes, “Institutions of higher education are caught in the middle of this ideological polarization, and those who work in them struggle […]
The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger
I have a dear friend who grades every meal he eats outside of his home and has tracked such meals for decades in a little notebook. His meals rarely earn less than an A. The question is just how many pluses will follow the A. It is then a notebook of A’s to A+++++’s. I behave similarly with […]
Medicine and the Good Life: Tackling the Big Questions of Flourishing at Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Margaret Chisolm, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, was at a crossroads. She had just completed a decade of clinical addiction research, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next. “At that point, I was thinking I didn’t really want to do that kind of research anymore,” said […]
Is Your Work Worth It: How to Think About Meaningful Work by Christopher Wong Michaelson and Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
Is Your Work Worth It: How to Think About Meaningful Work by Christopher Wong Michaelson and Jennifer Tosti-Kharas combines research with personal stories – their own and those of people who died in the attacks on September 11, 2001. September 11 was a turning point in the authors’ careers, a tragedy that caused them each […]
Law Students with Courage and Calling
In his reflection on “Training Happy Warriors,” James E. Coleman, Jr., Professor of the Practice of Law at Duke University Law School and Director of the Duke Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility and of the Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic, discusses ways he engages law students to cultivate a deep sense of […]
The Flourishing Nurse: Moral Suffering and Resilience in Healthcare
When Cynda Rushton started her nursing career, she was challenged with the physical, psychological, and ethical challenges that she faced on a day-to-day basis. One case, in particular, was impossible to forget. A young child had experienced severe neurological damage from a lack of oxygen to the brain. They were kept alive on a ventilator […]
How to Know a Person by David Brooks
David Brooks is on a mission. Growing up, he was solitary and emotionally reserved. His family, though they had a deep love for one another, rarely expressed it, leading Brooks to retreat into his own private world of books and ideas. This focus helped him get into the University of Chicago, but it also kept […]
What is the Connection between Purpose & Love?
Carolyn Woo explores purpose and love through her own story in her recent essay for Virtues & Vocations. She writes, “It is not beyond us to know whom we love, what we love, and how we will love in return. It is our story—evolving, gripping, empowering, and sanctifying.” Read more.
The Good Surgeon: Character and Flourishing at Duke University School of Medicine
“Thank goodness he died. We are really slammed tonight.” Dr. Ryan Antiel, now an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, couldn’t believe what his fellow resident had just said. Part of it, of course, was true. It was 3 in the morning, and they had been responding to emergencies all […]
Connecting Wisdom and Purpose
Physicians James and Margaret Plews-Ogan apply their years of research on practical wisdom to their lives since James’ ALS diagnosis. They share how their own sense of purpose has changed, and provide ways of reimagining the possibilities for virtue within loss and grief. Read their essay on Purpose and Turbocharged Living here.