As the pandemic rips through university plans and budgets, many of us in positions of leadership are called upon to make significant budget cuts. Not the slow, incremental kind, but significant cutbacks that will affect everyone. Often these are not efforts to cut excess with surgical precision but cuts made across the board, hitting the healthy and the weak in equal measure. The trend is to push responsibility for making these cutbacks down to lower levels—from the provost to the deans, program directors, and department chairs. The message: “Work with your numbers, and come back to us with a budget that is xx percent less.”
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
