Faith, virtue, and the moral renewal of the professions

Institute for Social Concerns calls faculty from Christian colleges and universities to join a national social movement

October 7, 2026

In an era of loud debates over the value of a college education and whether universities should focus on job training or student formation, the Institute for Social Concerns is at the helm of a national social movement to equip faculty and students to pursue both. The Institute’s Virtues & Vocations forum is an international, aspirational, cross-professional learning community that maintains thriving professions are the backbone of thriving societies and knows professional excellence requires both competence and character.

*Christopher C. Miller, associate teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, participates in the faith-based IVT workshop.*

This September, the Institute hosted the first-ever Christian faith-based Integrating Virtue Together (IVT) workshop, welcoming nearly 30 faculty from 24 Christian colleges and universities across the country to the University of Notre Dame.

“Since 2023, Virtues & Vocations’ IVT initiative has reached more than 200 faculty from 91 institutions across the US and 5 countries, reaching thousands of students through redesigned courses that intentionally cultivate character and a commitment to the common good as part of professional identity,” said Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Institute for Social Concerns.

“Offering a version of IVT that grounds virtue and vocation in the Christian faith was a natural extension of the work, not only because of Notre Dame’s foundational commitment to faith and virtue, but also because Catholic social teaching permeates everything we do at the Institute for Social Concerns.”

IVT gives faculty from across institutions and disciplines the opportunity to join a community of practice in integrating moral virtues into a course they will teach, kicking off each cohort with a workshop at Notre Dame followed by virtual working group meetings and ongoing pedagogical support from Virtues & Vocations.

The faith-based IVT was launched through a grant from the Lilly Network of Church-related Colleges & Universities along with support from the Kern Family Foundation and a partnership with the Holy Cross network of colleges and universities.

“We were thrilled to host faculty from our sister institutions that were established by the Congregation of Holy Cross along with other Catholic and Protestant institutions,” Shanahan said. “Our shared faith along with our diverse backgrounds, both theologically and professionally, created robust dialogue and opportunities to learn from each other.”

Virtues & Vocations focuses on pre-professional and professional education, and the September workshop included faculty from engineering, health professions, business, education, social work, architecture, and more.

“We believe deeply that the value of a college education is not just as a way to prepare students for the professions nor as a source of whole-person formation,” Shanahan said. “A college education should, indeed, provide both these things. But more importantly, we have a duty to students — and indeed to society — to connect character with competence, calling and a commitment to the common good. The value of a college education is not just for the individual but is foundational to the moral renewal of society. I wholeheartedly believe that moral renewal in the professions — the work we do every day — is where we build the foundation of a just, beautiful world.”

In addition to Integrating Virtue Together, Virtues & Vocations offers coaching, webinars, publications, an annual conference, and an expansive web-based platform, PracticalVirtue.com. Virtues & Vocations is an outward facing project that is an extension of the Institute for Social Concerns’ extensive research, educational programming, and community partnerships as the scholarly home for interdisciplinary responses to questions of justice at the University of Notre Dame.