Working Across Disciplines for Character Across the Curriculum

Working Across Disciplines for Character Across the Curriculum

May 2022

In 2019, Baylor University Assistant Professor of Music Education, Kelly Hollingsworth, was invited to participate in a “Character Across the Curriculum” cohort and integrate virtue into one of her music education courses. The Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning initiated Character Across the Curriculum in 2016, gathering interdisciplinary groups of faculty willing to commit to a year of monthly meetings where they would discuss how to cultivate character through their courses. Hollingsworth and others in her cohort explored practical ways to change courses to foster good character, and each reworked a course syllabus to integrate virtue.

“One of the skills that I had noticed that my students struggled with was peer teaching,” said Hollingsworth, who taught elementary music for 19 years and now trains future teachers. “They’ll hold their paper, and they are shaking as they’re trying to get us to sing or move or dance. The class really is about being comfortable with being uncomfortable because if you can’t move in a crazy way, then your students aren’t going to move, and when you’re teaching eight years old, they need to move.”

Hollingsworth chose to cultivate courage and perseverance, and had students reflect on how courageous they felt before and after each of their five required peer teaching assignments.

“The big picture goal was to grow some courage and as a result of that, develop perseverance, so that when they leave to begin their student teaching they will feel more comfortable making the goofy sounds and doing the crazy moves and exploring all the fun possibilities because they are more confident,” she said.

Hollingsworth first added courage to her course in spring 2020, and has continued to improve the process of cultivating character in subsequent semesters. She now gives students more opportunities to peer teach, and has intentional reflection built in at different points in the semester.

Many faculty who have participated in Character Across the Curriculum cohorts said that not only was it helpful to participate in the year-long working group, but they have continued to refine and apply what they learned in their cohort.

Ian Gravagne, Baylor Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in Electrical & Computer Engineering has been intentionally cultivating character through his classes for several years, and most recently changed his senior-level “System Modeling and Control” class.

“I am not new at this, so the process feels smooth and natural for me by now and students give uniformly positive feedback,” he said. “But, admittedly, when I was first experimenting with virtue integration in engineering classes the reviews were more mixed.”

Darin Davis, Director of the Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning, views part of his work as building a space where faculty can support each other and consider “how it is possible for Baylor’s classrooms, laboratories, and lecture halls to become places of transformational education where teaching cultivates character.”

The Character Across the Curriculum cohorts have been an important part of this work, but the Institute has also sponsored a series of lunch lectures where faculty are invited to hear from educators experienced at integrating virtue in higher education and respond with small group discussions on the practical implications.

“Baylor has always been committed, both in word and in deed, since its inception, to forming the hearts and the minds and the spirits of those students who study here, and we also take seriously the idea of formation for faculty,” Davis said, emphasizing that the character initiatives at the Institute for Faith and Learning are helping faculty work through how to apply these institutional values in concrete ways. “There’s a multiplier effect from these initiatives. When faculty get excited about being able to do this, then they are likely to integrate virtue in more than one course that they teach, and they also begin to talk about it with colleagues. Faculty begin to have an imagination for virtue formation as a central piece of course development.”