The Virtues in Higher Education

We seek the support of the John Templeton Foundation for a three-year period in the amount of $2,954,211 million to fund activities of the new Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The mission of the Institute has 3 aims, to promote: (1) the flourishing of OU students; (2) research on virtue and flourishing; and (3) the flourishing of all Oklahomans. In fulfulment of its mission, the Institute's activities will (1) deepen our understanding of the proper place of the virtues in higher education; (2) develop philosophically and empirically grounded programs and practices that cultivate the virtues; (3) implement those practices on a large scale at a top-tier university; (4) develop valid, reliable, and meaningful methods of measuring virtue development; and (5) establish channels of engagement and outreach to a wide array of audiences both within and outside the University. The institute enjoys broad support on campus and off. The project to start an Institute was led by Dr. Kyle Harper, the Senior Vice President and Provost of the University, with the support of a planning grant from JTF. The Institute's new Director is Dr. Nancy Snow. We seek the support of the John Templeton Foundation to launch an ambitious range of programs including activities for OU students, interdisciplinary research in virtue, and an array of innovative outreach programs that promise to make the University of Oklahoma a unique and influential center for the study of virtue education. Though we plan to begin our efforts at OU and in Oklahoma, we also intend to launch national and international outreach initiatives. We will function as a "meta-institute,' bringing together representatives of other institutes with the aim of starting collaborative initiatives. We will launch the "virtues across continents" project, which will mobilize our connections worldwide, again with the aim of collaborating and coordinating our efforts.