If you are a dean or a department chair, you are probably spending some energy these days planning the meeting you will have with your faculty to mark the opening of the 2025–26 year. I have written on this topic before, back when I was a well-intentioned dean trying to help my faculty get a good start to what promised to be (and was) a difficult year. Now I am a faculty member anticipating that start-of-the-year meeting from a new perspective.
Character (Still) Counts: Moral Injury and the Case for Character Education
Many academic leaders remember the Character Counts! initiative from the 1990s and early 2000s. It was visible in schools and youth programs nationwide, emphasizing as core values the Six Pillars
Teresa Maggard Stephens
June 15, 2026
