Archives: Newsletter Post
Social Media: Professional Identity Formation, and the Practice of Medicine: To Tweet or Not to Tweet
Over 10 years ago, educators and leaders in medicine noticed with concern the advent of social media and immediately recognized ways in which physician and medical student use of these applications might undermine the doctor-patient relationship, professional identity formation, and ethical standards. Following the first set of guidelines issued by the AMA in 2010, the […]
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes.” One reason University of Houston professor Brene Brown’s books are bestsellers is that her writing is beautiful. She presents data on courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy with words that feel more like a […]
The Narratives Project: Using Stories to Pursue Purpose and Possibility
When Smith alumna Jessica Vivar was a student and decided she wanted to pursue teaching, her parents asked her why she bothered to go to Smith if she just wanted to be a teacher and not one of the careers they imagined she might pursue, like doctor or lawyer or engineer. Vivar shares this story […]
What is Most Essential About a College Education?
What is most essential about a college education? As costs rise, and enrollments decline, institutions of higher learning are being forced to answer this question. Some propose trying to do more with less: increasing class sizes, hiring more adjuncts, eliminating humanities departments, pushing to replace education with educational technology. They are effectively saying: “what is […]
The Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World
published October 2021 “Work is good when workers see how their efforts contribute to the thriving, beautification and celebration of the world.” –This Sacred Life, page 145 When I picked up Norman Wirzba’s new book, I expected to read a response to environmental crises like climate change and plastics in the ocean. While Wirzba is known […]
Cultivating Public Responsibility in Engineering Students
Is engineering education preparing students to take professional responsibility for the social and ethical implications of their work? As the public becomes more reliant on engineering whistleblowers, are we preparing engineering students to play this role? These questions are central to a new study by University of Michigan professors Erin Cech and Cynthia Finelli called “Learning to be Watchdogs: […]
What is Higher Education?
In virtue of what are universities institutions of higher education? Surely it means more than higher in the number of years in school, more than higher in its demands on student attention and effort, and it certainly ought to mean more than higher in its costs, financial or otherwise. I would hope that a university […]
No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)
Kate Bowler’s latest memoir, No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear), intersects with Virtues & Vocations’ emphasis on moral purpose in and beyond one’s profession. This second book about Bowler’s life after being diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35 particularly engages with the ways her heightened sense of mortality […]
Mercer Law School Requires Virtue Ethics First-Year Course
For more than fifteen years, Mercer Law School has pioneered a virtue ethics approach to professional identity formation within the legal profession by requiring all first-year students to take a course in professional identity that focuses on developing practical wisdom. With the American Bar Association considering an amendment to its accreditation requirements to require a […]
Can Virtue be Taught? Practical Wisdom and Engaged Learning
We were on the bus at sunrise in Immokalee, Florida —students and a fellow faculty member with migrant workers on the way to pick oranges for the day. We were part of an experiential Migrant Experiences Seminar I began in the 1990s at the University of Notre Dame to experience first hand migrant life and the complexities […]