Calendar
Fall
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Week 1 Searching with Others
In this first section of the course, we consider the Guiding Question: "What am I searching for?" This week, we begin by considering the pedagogy of learning in community and the role of vulnerability and communion in our personal development.
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Week 2 Searching with Values
Using the VIA Character Strengths Survey, this week we discuss how our values and strengths inform how and what we search for, our engagement with others, and our ongoing personal development.
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Week 3 Searching with Narratives
Inspired by the creative works of world-renowned authors, we critically examine our own authorship and the origins of our stories, ideas, relationships, and identities.
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Week 4 Identifying Responsibilities
As we enter into Section Two, we build upon our growing self-knowledge and begin to articulate our most fundamental, animating beliefs by challenging each other to consider who and what we are responsible for.
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Week 5 Identifying Perspectives
After contemplating our responsibilities, this week we consider how our complex and multiple identities inform our perspectives, beliefs, and bonds of interconnection with others.
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Week 6 Identifying Holy Cross
While we are the authors of our own story, we've also stepped into the larger story of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Bridging the past and present, we explore how our beliefs might intersect with those of Holy Cross.
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Week 7 Identifying Frameworks
In this final bend of Section Two, we prepare for a time of integration and deep reflection by examining how our understanding of God informs our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world.
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Week 8 Identifying Root Beliefs
To conclude the first half of the semester, we integrate the required content, independent and critical thinking, and our in-class conversations to identify and describe our most fundamental, core beliefs. We call these beliefs Root Beliefs.
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Week 9 Encountering Dissonance
As we enter into Section Three, we are guided by the question "What have I encountered?" and assess our beliefs, particularly those beliefs we hold about ourselves, alongside the realities of imposter syndrome, expectations, and failure.
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Week 10 Encountering Brokenness
This week, we engage boldly with our own faults and limitations and, informed by our root beliefs, consider how our brokenness might connect us to others.
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Week 11 Encountering Hope
This week, we consider how Bl. Basil Moreau and C.S. Lewis challenged their communities to integrate their experience of suffering and brokenness with a real anticipation of resurrection as a way to practice authentic hope.
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Week 12 Encountering Narratives Anew
As we enter into the final week of the fall semester, we look back on the readings, experiences, and conversations that have helped shape and change our narrative and the stories we wish to write in the future.
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Week 13 Encountering Ourselves Anew
As the final movement of the semester, we analyze how we have grown in our self-knowledge, emboldened, altered, or challenged our beliefs, and responded to the encounters of our first semester at Notre Dame.
Spring
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Week 1 Practicing Self-Reflection
We begin by extending a bridge between Semester One and Semester Two - considering our journey thus far and how our encounters may inform the conversations to come.
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Week 2 Foundations of a Life Well-Lived
What do we mean when we say "mission" and how can it inspire or give direction to a life well-lived? This week, we launch into a semester-long consideration of the relationship between mission and a life well-lived.
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Week 3 Inspirations of a Life Well-Lived
Inspired by the lives of Fr. Ted Hesburgh, C.S.C. and others who have come before us, we observe and evaluate how a sense of mission can animate each facet of life.
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Week 4 Questions of a Life Well-Lived
With a refined understanding of mission, we focus our attention on the questions, practices, habits, relationships, and resources that can help us discern and refine our mission.
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Week 5 Accompaniment a Life Well-Lived
As a specific element of our mission development, we examine the kinds of relationships that are characteristic of a life well-lived, and how we form, cultivate, and embrace these important, though perhaps difficult relationships in life.
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Week 6 Career and a Life Well-Lived
Informed by our conversations about accompaniment and mission, this week we explore the specific role of work in a life well-lived.
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Week 7 Discerning with Others and a Life Well-Lived
The process of discernment is an ongoing, lifelong endeavor. And while we are the authors of our story, it is often helpful to involve those we trust. This week, we determine how and when we invite others into our ongoing discernment.
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Week 8 Defining a Life Well-Lifed
To conclude Section Four, we integrate required content, independent and critical thinking, and in-class conversations to write and reflect upon our personal mission statements.
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Week 9 Suffering and a Life Well-Lived
As we enter into the final section of the Moreau course, we refine our articulated mission statement. To begin, we assess our mission statement alongside the reality of suffering in our lives and in the world.
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Week 10 Kinship and a Life Well-Lived
This week, grounded in the notion of radical solidarity, we consider how to apply our mission statement to combat the structures and habits that separate us from others.
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Week 11 Anti-Racism and a Life Well-Lived
This week, we seek to build upon and apply last week’s considerations to the specific injustice of racism.
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Week 12 Practicing Self-Reflection Anew
As we conclude the Moreau course, we look back on our most recent experiences, honestly and thoughtfully conducting a self-study to evaluate how we have lived our mission and how to embody this mission in the years to come.
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Week 13 Pursuing a Life Well-Lived
The final section of the Moreau course equipped us to consider how to apply our mission to address central human questions. In this final assignment, we describe how our personal mission statement will animate our lives at Notre Dame and beyond.