Planning Grant: A New, Holistic Paradigm for Undergraduate STEM Education: Inspiring Big Questions by Cultivating Virtuous Scientists

As universities have become more professionalized, a need has emerged to establish mechanisms to restore open inquiry in science education. There is also a need to provide an experience that exceeds the perceived limits of human thought while fostering the boundless creativity and dynamism made possible by human imagination and intellect. Through this planning grant, we will develop a three-year implementation project to establish a new STEM educational experience that will cultivate a habit of open-minded inquiry, develop those virtues needed for substantive intellectual progress, and equip students with the tools needed to actively create rather than passively absorb knowledge. During this planning grant, we will establish a network of academic educators and researchers who, along with undergraduate students, will engage in discussions about the integration of virtue-based pedagogy into a higher education science curriculum. We will also instigate a literature review on this topic and begin to develop assessment tools that will establish the educational impact of such a change in the curriculum. We will develop sample content for a course to be later integrated into the first-year science curriculum as well as an outline for a book to accompany the course. These activities will guide the preparation and submission of a proposal to the John Templeton Foundation for the full three-year implementation project. These activities will help to generate widespread enthusiasm for the integration of virtues-based pedagogy into higher education science curriculum, both at the University of Notre Dame and our peer institutions. This enthusiasm will translate into a three-year implementation project that would reimagine the way students embrace their education. This revolution in scientific education will unlock the potential for exponential knowledge creation throughout students’ college education and beyond graduation.