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. The goal is that our graduates receive a rigorous engineering education while also becoming better people.
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
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.
Faculty members Cameron Kim, Siobhan Oca, and Stacy Tantum shared their insights at the 2025 IEEE Ethics Conference at Northwestern University, presenting strategies to empower engineering undergraduates to help shape an ethical future
Character & the Microbiome
The 2025 Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) Social and Ethical Implications (SEI) virtual workshop included a discussion of how character factors into research ethics, expanding the traditionally circumscribed view of ethics
Faculty member awarded Integrating Virtue Together Fellowship
Megan Madonna, an Assistant Research Professor in Biomedical Engineering, earns a fellowship to integrate humility, justice, and wisdom into BME 462L Design for the Developing World
Spring Character Forward Workshop
In May, two dozen Pratt colleagues joined Rich Eva for an introduction to character formation and strategies for cultivating character
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.
Rich earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Baylor University and his A.B. 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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