Honors College is using funds to promote ‘love of the truth,’ community service
The University of Tulsa is working to instill virtues of truth and morality in its honors students through a new grant.
Located in Oklahoma, the university recently received a $585,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative, a project of the Lilly Endowment and Wake Forest University, to support programming in its Honors College.
“Our goal is to prepare our students for life through cultivating a love of the truth, a moral vision and sense of purposefulness, and an appreciation for what is beautiful,” Jennifer Frey, dean of the Honors College, told The College Fix.
The university has two main goals for the grant, according to a news release.
One is to “strengthen the classroom experience by improving assessments, training more faculty in a character-centered approach to the study of classic texts, increasing Honors offerings, and expanding the college’s Humane Letters degree.”
Honors College classes have a seminar format where students study virtues such as humility, fortitude, patience, and wisdom by reading classic works of literature.
These include ancient works like Homer’s “The Iliad” and Plato’s “Symposium,” along with novels like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and modern writings by Toni Morrison and Martin Luther King Jr.
University President Brad Carson told The College Fix the program stands out from other colleges in the way that it uses great works of literature to both educate and promote good character formation.
“We believe that communal and serious study of the great masterworks of Western civilization is one way of growing in excellent habits of mind—thinking, reasoning, communicating arguments—and one method of cultivating our desires to seek what is true, good, and beautiful,” Carson said in a recent email.
MORE: Classical initiative grows amid ‘immense hunger for serious intellectual community’
The second goal of the grant is to “build the infrastructure necessary to better integrate the Honors College’s student life experience with the curriculum and unique mission to educate for character and human flourishing,” according to the news release.
Frey, a philosophy professor who studies moral psychology, virtue, and ethics, told The Fix in a recent email that the grant is being used for two new positions, a service-learning coordinator and a program officer.
“The SLC is like an academic advisor, but for service. Students meet with her one-on-one to reflect on ways that they can give back to the community,” Frey said.
Meeting with the SLC will help students establish a routine of public service, according to the grant proposal provided to The Fix; honors students have a graduation requirement of 80 hours of community service.
Through the grant, university leaders also aim to foster character development in student dormitories.
Frey said the program officer’s role is to holistically integrate academic learning into residential life.
“While the seminar is a necessary and excellent space for growth in excellent habits of mind and character, it is not sufficient …” she told The Fix. “Our program officer works with our faculty to develop and execute programming utilizing the hall government in the dorm where our students live.”
When Frey first began overseeing the Honors College program in 2023, she told The Fix that one of her goals was to “foster a climate of service to the community beyond the college and the campus.”
The College Fix also contacted the University of Tulsa Honors Student Association last week via Instagram, asking about the grant and the character-building initiative, but received no reply.
Several other universities also are working on projects through the Educating Character Initiative grants.
Researchers at Harvard University are using their grant to study students’ character and values and the relation to their well-being, The Fix reported.
Another project through the initiative is taking place at Hope College, a private Christian institution in Michigan. Through the grant, college leaders are working to integrate the virtues of gratitude and generosity in courses and research projects, according to a College Fix report.
MORE: Wake Forest program helps students build ‘moral, civic’ character
IMAGE: University of Tulsa/Facebook
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