Earlier this year, professors from two Catholic universities received a $2.6 million grant that will bring together experts from different academic disciplines to explore new and compelling ways of measuring virtue.
Over a three-year period, Nancy Snow, professor of philosophy at Marquette University, and Darcia Narvaez, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, will co-direct "The Self, Motivation & Virtue Project." This initiative will use the grant to fund approximately 10 interdisciplinary research projects on virtue, character and the development of the moral self.
A Marquette news release quoted Snow saying, "Many approaches to the study of character and virtue consider personality to be foundational to character and virtue. Our project hypothesizes that the self is the site of virtue. … We will also look at the development of virtue in the emerging person — what happens as we grow up and develop into people."