More Than a Meeting: How Character Forward’s Formation Cohorts Are Building Community at Pratt

“Discipline isn’t a conscious act in a high-stakes moment. It is the sum of every small habit built before it.”

Arnav Singh, a recent Duke graduate and former volunteer firefighter, shared that lesson with students in Duke Engineering’s Character Forward Fellows Program. For years, Singh said, he had rolled his eyes when officers corrected seemingly minor details—a knot tied a little too tightly or too loosely. He knew the rules, but over time, “good enough” began to feel sufficient.

Then, during a primary search inside a burning building, Singh stretched an inch beyond where protocol said he should. That inch led to an injury.

“It wasn’t until then,” he told the group, “that I understood what saying ‘good enough’ had behind it.”

For the students listening, Singh’s story raised a question at the heart of the Character Forward Fellowship: What habits do people need to cultivate before they face a crisis?

At Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, Character Forward creates space for questions that do not always fit easily into an engineering syllabus: What should engineers build and what kind of people are they becoming in the process? The semester-long fellowship is open to all Pratt undergraduates interested in the ethical and human dimensions of engineering. The fellowship program consists of two parts: a half-credit, discussion-based Ethics & Technology seminar and Formation Cohort meetings that bring students together with faculty, alumni, and industry leaders to discuss character, leadership, and responsibility. The program is intentionally close-knit, designed to encourage discussion, reflection, and candid conversation.

“We’re trying to create the kind of space that can all too easily be squeezed out of the average engineering curriculum,” said Dr. Rich Eva, the initiative’s director. “The kind of engineer you want to be should grow out of the kind of person you want to become.”

Showing Up—and Thinking Differently

At the Formation Cohort meetings, participants arrive having read an essay, watched a talk, or prepared with a few questions in advance. Over dinner, a guest speaker shares experiences in which traits like courage, discipline, and responsibility have had real consequences. Students and alumni then continue the conversation in small groups.

The point is not to arrive at a single correct answer. It is to give students time to wrestle with questions that are easy to postpone amid classes, projects, and recruiting: What does success mean? What kind of person do I want to become? What responsibilities come with the work I hope to do?

In one meeting, retired General Charles Q. Brown Jr., former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about discipline as something built through simple, repeatable habits such as starting meetings on time and maintaining routines while traveling. Aerospace engineer Andy Crocker offered another view of character when he described becoming emotional while delivering difficult news to colleagues. Rather than seeing the moment as a failure of leadership, Crocker came to understand vulnerability as something that could deepen trust with his team.

What Students Carry with Them

But the fellowship’s impact may be clearest in what students say happened outside of those sessions.

In anonymous surveys provided after the culmination of the initial program, one student said the cohort gave her the vocabulary and courage to navigate a difficult conversation with a close friend, allowing her both to explain how she had been hurt and to recognize the role of her own insecurity. Others said the program pushed them to reconsider assumptions about achievement, service, and the lives they hoped to build.

Just as important was the group’s culture. One student shared that they valued the fellowship because it created a safe space where people felt comfortable expressing different opinions. Over time, relationships extended outside the formal meetings, where students from different years and majors shared meals and watched movies together. For some, the lasting lesson was simply the reassurance that they were not “alone” and that others had faced similar experiences.

Taken together, students’ reflections suggest that the Character Forward fellowship gave them more than a series of interesting discussions. It gave them a language for thinking about character, real-world examples of virtues such as discipline and courage, and a community willing to challenge their assumptions about leadership, success, and responsibility. Every participating student reported feeling better equipped to continue developing their own character, and several students identified the formation cohort meetings  as one of the most meaningful academic experiences they have had at Duke. Moreover, nearly half of the students said the Ethics & Technology course was the single best class they had taken at Duke.

The first fellowship class of 14 students ran this past spring 2026 and will run again in spring 2027 with up to 25 participants. Character Forward is not only about preparing students for the work they will do as engineers. It is also about helping them think more intentionally about the people they are becoming in the process.