Every university shapes the character of its students. Often, this happens implicitly and unintentionally. At Duke, we want to make this explicit. We want to bring Character Forward.
We aim to intentionally cultivate positive character traits through our curricular and co-curricular activities. The goal is that our graduates receive a rigorous engineering education while also becoming better people.
9:00 am – 1:00 pm | Tuesday, May 6 | Wilkinson Building
Pratt faculty and staff are invited to this interactive workshop to explore a character-based approach to professional ethics and develop strategies to cultivate positive character traits in ourselves and others.
We educate people on the concepts and strategies at work in engineering ethics and character education
Cultivate Character
We cultivate positive character traits in individuals and teams for the sake of societal flourishing
Foster Community
We foster moral and intellectual community around issues fundamental to living well in a pluralistic and technological age
Tingjun Chen in ECE works with OIT to test out telecommunications and fiber optics ideas around campus. These images of his lab were taken on February 6, 2025.
Serving with Integrity
We believe in delivering our best to the clients and communities we serve. When student projects are left unfinished, we don’t let that potential go to waste. Steve McClelland, executive director of the Christensen Family Center for Innovation at Duke, is working on Project Posterity, a system that will allow unfinished projects to be “recycled,” passed along to other Duke colleagues. Reach out to Steve McClelland for more information.
Eva publishes “How to Moralize” to clarify the concept of moralizing and evaluate its merits
Pluralism As a Critical Engineering Tool
Rich Eva recently joined a panel for Duke’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging to show how engineering lessons in pluralism can help anybody have constructive dialogue.
As director of the new Character Forward Initiative, he’s working with faculty to help students become great engineers—and good people
Recap: Character Forward Kick-Off Workshop
Genevieve Lipp discussed the First-Year Computing Experience, in which she’s created structures that teach resilience. Feedback loops, for example, help students to “engage in the learning cycle even when there are setbacks.”
Rich earned a PhD in philosophy from Baylor University and a BA from Princeton. He specializes in ethics, pedagogy and political philosophy. His experience as a D1 athlete at Princeton sparked his interest in leadership and character development. After Princeton, he worked in New York City as an assistant vice president at Barclays Bank helping organize pro bono service initiatives. Rich returned to academia to investigate questions in applied ethics.
The Character Forward Initiative is a partnership of the Pratt School of Engineering and The Purpose Project at Duke.
The Purpose Project, generously funded by the Duke Endowment, is a collaboration of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School and the Office of the Provost.
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