Deborah Borman glanced at her schedule for the day with a wave of anxiety. She was starting on one of the scariest tasks of her new department chair duties, a day of conducting annual reviews with her faculty with no idea how to prepare for these meetings, other than reading the professors’ self-evaluations. As a faculty member for 12 years, she had dreaded her own annual reviews with previous chairs because the conversations seemed so stilted, formal, and unhelpful. Now as a new chair herself, she kept thinking that there had to be a better way to help faculty monitor their job performance and achieve their dreams.
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
