About

the Moreau Program

The Moreau Program is a signature part of undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame. As the sole curriculum required of all undergraduate students, the program embodies the University’s commitment to holistic character formation and providing an educational experience in which students not only obtain knowledge but also learn how to flourish and live well.

Our primary goals are two-fold: first, to equip students with the increasingly rare skills of disciplined attention to reality; second, to guide students to participate actively in their own intentional character and spiritual formation. This is accomplished through a rich integration of curricular and co-curricular learning experiences in which, as a community of peers and faculty, students engage with classic texts and enduring questions about the nature, worth, and purpose of the human person. Together, these learning experiences invite students to step away from the routines and tasks of day-to-day life and commit to intellectual reflection and the intentional practice of living well.

character approach

The Moreau Program’s philosophy of character formation might be aptly captured by the phrase, used by Joseph Pieper with reference to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, “the true precedes the good.” While our ultimate goal is to help students live good lives, we believe that living well depends on a truthful grasp of the way things are concerning ourselves, other people, our world (including nature and the cosmos), and God. Thus, the first goal of our First-Year Seminar is that students will “practice disciplined attention to self, others, the world, and God, and articulate how you can live accordingly.”

Students do not simply design or manage their lives. Rather, informed by texts from classic thinkers (e.g., Aristotle, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day), in conversation with peers and guided by Notre Dame faculty, staff and peer leaders, students wrestle with truth claims about various aspects of a life well-lived, such as gratitude, dignity, friendship, community, work, and rest. There is a contemplative dimension of the course whereby students pay attention to reality, and only then address how to live accordingly.

rooted in contemplation, yet eminently practical

We invite students to attend to how they live based upon what they think is true. In doing so, we invite students to “participate actively in [their] holistic formation by articulating how [they] are loved and how [they] are called to love.” This language, inspired by St. Augustine, reflects our Catholic mission and recognizes that how we are formed by love informs how we are called to love. Thus, while rooted in contemplation and committed to “the true proceeds the good,” the Moreau Program is an eminently practical project where students are invited, in community with others, to character formation where the “project” at hand is their active commitment to “a life well-lived,” a life where we reflect on how we have been loved and in turn endeavor to love well.

looking forward: The Moreau Senior Capstone

The Moreau Senior Capstone represents a strategic institutional priority through which we seek to ensure a cohesive, four-year arc of intentional character formation for every undergraduate student—scheduled for implementation with all graduating seniors in spring 2029. The Capstone will be designed to ensure students leave Notre Dame able to critically synthesize their undergraduate journey, narrate their formation, and anticipate how to flourish after graduation. The Moreau Program goals and key features, including a common set of questions, texts, and co-curricular experiences, all engaged as a community, will anchor a variety of instantiations of the Senior Capstone.

In serving as both an introduction and capstone to a holistic undergraduate education, the Moreau Program is designed to enhance the intellectual formation students encounter through coursework and research as well as the character formation students experience outside of the classroom.

By combining intellectual exploration with personal development, the Moreau Program embodies Notre Dame’s commitment to offering an undergraduate education that nurtures the mind, body, and spirit.