Mount Holyoke College receives grant to explore courage and care in higher education

Mount Holyoke College received a capacity-building grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University to launch “Courage and Care in Community,” a yearlong project that will explore how the College develops students’ characters to prepare them to become thoughtful leaders and engaged citizens.

Led by Professor of Politics on the Ford Foundation Elizabeth K. Markovits, who is also associate provost and associate dean of faculty, the initiative will engage faculty, students and staff in conversations about courage and care, two virtues that have shaped Mount Holyoke since its founding. Through faculty learning circles, student seminars, campus conversations and collaborative planning, the project will lay the groundwork for a new first-year module in which students will reflect on the role of character in their education.

“For nearly two centuries, Mount Holyoke has been educating students to lead with courage and a deep sense of responsibility for others,” Markovits said. “This grant gives us an opportunity to make that work more intentional and to contribute Mount Holyoke’s distinctive perspective to a growing national conversation about character education.”

Conversations about civic education and character have gained renewed attention across higher education, but according to Markovits, Mount Holyoke offers a perspective rooted in its own history. Mount Holyoke has long focused on cultivating qualities that extend beyond academic achievement, beginning with Mary Lyon’s vision of educating the whole person and continuing to the College’s current commitment to a liberal arts education that supports purposeful leadership.

The grant supports a campuswide assessment of character education across the academic and cocurricular experiences, such as research, leadership programs, community engagement and the First-year Seminars Program. Faculty learning circles will bring together instructors from across disciplines to study scholarship on character education and consider how to more intentionally integrate the virtues of courage and care into students’ experiences. Student ambassadors will help shape the work throughout the year, culminating in a faculty–student retreat to identify opportunities and develop recommendations for expanding the initiative.

“We already do this work exceptionally well,” Markovits said. “Our goal is to deepen it, to develop a shared language and [to] ensure that students understand how courage and care can guide them as scholars and citizens.”

By the end of the grant period, the project team expects to deliver recommendations for future character education initiatives across the College and pilot a new first-year module introducing students to the role of courage and care in a Mount Holyoke education.