The Character Forward Fellows Program invites Pratt undergraduate students to explore the ethical and character dimensions of engineering through a focused spring-semester learning community. Fellows will examine how technology shapes humanity—and how engineers can shape technology with wisdom, justice, courage, and discipline. Participants will take a seminar on Ethics & Technology and join a small cohort of peers, faculty, alumni, and industry leaders committed to developing engineers of character who will leverage technology for the good of humanity.
Please note that the deadline to apply for priority consideration is October 23, 11:59 p.m.
Character Forward is an initiative within Pratt to make strong character essential to engineering excellence. It is a partnership between Pratt and The Purpose Project at Duke, a collaboration between the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Provost’s Office.
PROGRAM
Character Forward Fellows will enroll in EGR 190: Ethics and Technology (½ credit), a course designed to help engineering students reflect on the nature of technology and how we ought to use it. The class meets Tuesdays, 1:25–2:40 PM, Spring 2026.
In addition to the course, Fellows will participate in a Character Formation Cohort, a series of four 90-minute sessions held throughout the spring semester. These sessions bring together students, faculty, alumni, and industry professionals to cultivate the virtues of wisdom, justice, discipline, and courage—traits essential for ethical leadership in engineering.
COMMITMENT
The fellowship is a one-semester commitment (Spring 2026).
Course: Fellows must enroll in EGR 190: Ethics and Technology (½ credit).
Cohort: Fellows attend four 90-minute character formation sessions held during the semester (dates announced after selection).
ELIGIBILITY
All Pratt undergraduate students with a GPA at or above 3.0 are eligible to apply. Faculty and staff are encouraged to nominate students who show promise as future engineering leaders of character.
AWARD
Fellows receive a $1,000 fellowship award.
APPLY
If you would like to become a Character Forward Fellow, please complete the application at the link below.
The deadline for priority consideration is October 23, with rolling applications accepted as space allows. Decisions for priority consideration come out on October 29.
CONTACT
If you have any questions about this program, please contact the director of this program, Rich Eva, at richard.eva@duke.edu.
Rich Eva is the inaugural Director of Character Forward, an initiative in Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering that integrates character formation across the engineering experience. He also serves as a research fellow with Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. Rich earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Baylor University and his A.B. from Princeton, graduating with honors. His experience as a Division I athlete at Princeton sparked his interest in leadership and character development. After graduation, he worked in New York City as an assistant vice president at Barclays Bank, where he specialized in contract negotiation and organized pro bono service initiatives. Returning to academia to pursue ethics, Rich has taught classes on logic, medical ethics, tech ethics, political philosophy, and history of philosophy, and he has published research in these areas as well. His current work with Character Forward focuses on equipping engineering faculty and students to become leaders of character who harness technology for the good of humanity.
Pursuing Purpose is a fellowship program that allows Duke undergraduate students to develop their purpose through a seminar taken in the spring semester that connects to an internship or substantial work experience over the summer. Students who are interested in exploring a curricular pivot or a kind of work they have not yet had an opportunity to try are particularly encouraged to apply for this fellowship.
Please note that the deadline to apply for priority consideration is October 24, 11:59 p.m.
Pursuing Purpose Fellows take “Pursuit of Purpose” (Ethics 253S, EI, SS, S), a one-credit seminar course that is designed to help students develop their sense of purpose, consider ways to channel that sense of purpose within the contemporary world of work, and take practical steps towards professional development in this area.
To that end, this course helps the student to choose and secure a summer internship. Fellows receive a $5000 stipend. Upon returning to campus in the fall, fellows organize and participate in a Purpose Symposium, in which they’ll integrate and share their insights from the program.
COMMITMENT
The commitment for this fellowship runs from the spring semester through to the fall.
Spring — Fellows must enroll in “Pursuit of Purpose” (Ethics 253S, EI, SS, S) during the spring semester. This course runs Tuesdays from 10:05AM-12:45PM and is required for all fellows. Please make sure that you are available during this time slot before submitting your application.
Summer — Fellows complete the summer internship (300 hours/8 weeks) that they choose and secure during “Pursuit of Purpose.” (If Fellows are pursuing an Ethics & Society Certificate, this internship may count as the Field Experience for the certificate’s experiential track.)
Fall — Fellows design and participate in a Purpose Symposium to help them integrate and share their insights from the fellowship.
ELIGIBILITY
All Duke second- and third-year students are eligible to apply for this fellowship. Contact Christian Ferney with any eligibility questions.
AWARD
Fellows receive a $5,000 stipend.
APPLY
If you would like to become a Pursuing Purpose Fellow, please fill out an application at the link below.
The deadline for priority consideration is October 24, and rolling applications open on October 29. Decisions for priority consideration come out on October 29.
If you have any questions about this program, please contact the director of this program, Christian Ferney, at christian.ferney@duke.edu.
Christian Ferney is Associate Director of Education, Operations & Media Strategy at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He has designed and led co-curricular and curricular programs for Duke undergraduate students for over 15 years. Recent examples have included What Now? — a network of first-year seminars and Writing 101 courses linked to a half-credit common experience course, which helped first-year students navigate their transition to Duke and start thinking about their larger sense of purpose. What Now? reached 400–500 students a year, roughly 25% of each class.
The faculty networks that Ferney developed during What Now? contributed to the formation of several Constellations, a new component of the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences’ curriculum that requires students to take several courses on related themes. Ferney currently leads the “How Are We Political Bodies?” Constellation. In Fall 2025, he is also co-teaching the Purpose Project-related course “What Should I Do With My Life? The Art of Choosing Well” (ETHICS 450S) with Katherine Jo, Director of Program Development and Design for The Purpose Project at Duke.
Germain Choffart (left) points out a site in the town of Saint-Avold to a group of DukeEngage students. Choffart grew up in the town and returned to direct a DukeEngage program in which students support local partners and immerse themselves in the community. Photo credit: Thomas Cytrynowicz.
Two years ago, Germain Choffart was trying to think up a DukeEngage program.
Choffart — a Lecturing Fellow in the Department of Romance Studies and longtime French instructor at Duke — first heard about DukeEngage when a colleague told him it was hiring site coordinators for its summer programs.
As a faculty member with experience directing study abroad programs, Choffart was more than a little overqualified for the job. But he had rotated off directing the Duke in Aix-en-Provence program for Global Education, so he was free that summer, and he was eager to travel and see a new part of the world.
Choffart was hired as a site coordinator for DukeEngage Uganda in Kampala, directed by engineering professor Ann Saterbak. This program teams up engineering students from Duke and Makerere University to design medical prototypes to meet the needs of local healthcare facilities, using only locally available materials.
During his eight weeks in Uganda, Choffart was inspired by how Dr. Saterbak led the program, and he saw that the students were having transformative experiences as well. He started thinking about creating a DukeEngage program of his own.
“It was a thrilling experience, and I came back full of ideas,” he said. “And then I started to brainstorm what could I do if I developed a program.”
Choffart first considered leading an environmentally-themed DukeEngage program somewhere in southern France. Then it hit him.
“Obviously, the one that’s in front of your nose is always the one you don’t see,” he said with a smile.
Choffart’s hometown, Saint-Avold, is in the Moselle département in northeastern France, a region historically known as Lorraine.
Formerly, the region was robust with economic activity, attracting waves of immigrants to work in its coal mines and other industries. But following the gradual closure of the mines from 1980–2004, the region saw a decline.
“With the closure of the mines, there has been a strong economic impact on the town,” said Choffart. “And now the city is a little bit in limbo. It’s trying to find a new footing and new economic growth.”
Choffart already knew that the town of Saint-Avold and an array of community organizations were actively working to improve conditions for lower-income people and families in the community.
“My mom was a social worker all her life,” he said.
Choffart called his mother, Carine Choffart. They talked through what a program in Saint-Avold might look like, drawing from her experience in the social field. His vision for the program started to come together.
“I know Saint-Avold well, but I also know its issues,” he recalled thinking. “I know how to potentially come and have an impact here by bringing DukeEngage students, who I knew would be extremely motivated to meet people, to work hard, and to learn from their experience.”
Quindlan Kelleher smiles while working in the pallet wood workshop Atelier Palettes, a project of the Association for Social Action in the Coal Basin (Association d’Action Sociale du Bassin Houiller, or ASBH). Photo credit: Thomas Cytrynowicz
Martin Heinztelman paints a classroom in a local elementary school, École Élementaire du Wenheck, in the Carrière-Wenheck neighborhood of Saint-Avold. This project was proposed by another key partner, the Town of Saint-Avold’s office of the mayor (Mairie). Photo credit: Emilie Tricot.
Ananya Gupta T’28 (right) and Daniel Cheng T’28 (center) share a social media plan they helped develop for the wool workshop at Côté Naturel with supervisor Hayet Ben Azaiez. Photo credit: Emilie Tricot.
Many of the students who applied to Choffart’s DukeEngage program in Saint-Avold were interested in having a different experience than a typical study abroad program would offer.
“DukeEngage is a really great way to be able to engage with the community,” said Quindlan Kelleher T’27. “The project aligned a lot with my values of working with the community and helping lower income families, and having an impact there is something that is really important to me.”
“I felt like this was a really good opportunity to get some of that abroad experience and see a different country and experience a different culture, but not only that — like really immerse myself,” said Martin Heintzelman T’26. “Especially in a city that’s not, like a tourist hub in Europe. I mean, it’s not Paris.”
Saint-Avold is definitely not Paris. With just under 15,000 inhabitants and a small town center, the locals started to recognize the students when they were out and about.
“It’s a small enough town where there’s a lot of familiar faces. People know we’re around — we’re in the newspaper and stuff like that,” Heintzelman said.
A regional TV station ran a segment on the DukeEngage students playing basketball at the Mission Locale du Baisin Houiller, and the local newspaper, Le Républicain Lorrain, published seven articles about them during their eight weeks in Saint-Avold.
While many of the stories highlight the novelty of a group of American students coming to town, they also spotlight their work on different projects — of which there were many.
“We’ve been involved in so many different projects — it’s quite unbelievable, everything that we’ve been able to do,” Choffart said.
DukeEngage students pose after they finish painting the “Stairs of Knowledge” or “Escaliers du Savoir,” with book titles representing both popular literature and international classics from the Francophone world. Another project proposed by the mayor’s office, the stairs are part of the pedestrian route connecting the local high school, Lycée Poncelet, to the city center. Photo credit: Germain Choffart.
What follows is a non-exhaustive list of the students’ projects in Saint-Avold: they pitched in at a workshop that restores furniture for low-income families, and another that teaches community members how to create furniture out of pallet wood. They created social media accounts for a local wool workshop that offers community members the training to make artisanal products as well as entrepreneurial skills. Students led activities with local schoolchildren, like soccer games, musical performances, and theater workshops.
After creating their own designs, students painted and restored public spaces, like the facade of the local cultural arts center and a staircase connecting the local high school to the town’s historical center. At the request of the mayor’s office, they created and designed a guide that encourages residents and business owners in the heart of town to “vegetalize” their homes and store-fronts by adding plants and flower beds, which helps to lower street temperatures and encourage pollinators.
In addition to these projects, Kelleher said that some of her most valuable experiences came from simply spending time with community members.
“It felt like we’ve had the opportunity to go in a community and just be with them and experience things with them, which has had a lot more impact on how I can connect with them,” she said. “I think that something that I personally want to take away is that there’s so much you can learn from someone by being with them and listening to their stories.”
“I think everyone who has a chance to do something like this, whether it’s here or in the U.S or another country, should really take advantage of it,” Heinztelman said. “We’ve just gotten to meet so many really interesting and cool people, and build relationships that would not occur in everyday life, in terms of across age gaps, or socioeconomic status, or education level.”
The Saint-Avold community embraced the students in turn.
“A lot of people are very surprised that American college students are in their town,” Kelleher said. “But they’ve been incredibly welcoming in every respect…even at the grocery store, we have a cashier that always loves us coming in because we can speak English to her, which is not a very common experience here.”
While Choffart said that this year’s students “have set a high bar” with their hard work and good attitudes, he plans to offer the program again next year, giving another group of students the chance to immerse themselves in a new place, and — like the DukeEngage motto says — “challenge themselves and change their worlds.”
“By working in a DukeEngage program, I feel like students can get so much that they cannot get in the classroom,” Choffart said. “My hope is that at the end of the program, when students go home, they take a little piece of Saint-Avold with them.”
Kelleher pauses to chat with program director Germain Choffart (in sunglasses) and Site Coordinator Luca Pixner (in green) sitting outside of a restaurant in Saint-Avold. Photo credit: Emile Tricot.
Many thanks to DukeEngage France’s community partners:
• A.S.B.H. (Association d’Action Social du Bassin Houiller) • Mairie de Saint-Avold • Mission Locale du Bassin Houiller • Mission Locale Moselle Centre • Centre Communal d’Action Sociale de Saint-Avold (C.C.A.S.) • Lycée Charles Jully • Lycée Poncelet • École Pierre Ernst • Collège Rabelais
The Prison Engagement Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics invites undergraduate students to apply to become Justice Lab fellows and affiliates. Please note that the deadline to apply is September 1, 11:59 p.m.
PROGRAM
How can students at a university like Duke provide services to incarcerated or recently incarcerated people? The goal of the Justice Lab is to centralize, systematize, and improve Duke’s volunteer offerings for undergraduate students. This project was developed in tandem with the student group Duke Justice Project.
Its initial focus is on the following areas:
Tutoring of incarcerated students (for GED/HiSET exams)
Support for the re-entry population in Durham, including childcare for re-entering parents taking evening classes
Participation in re-entry and support circles through the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham
Helping to set up a Petey Greene tutoring program to expand tutoring offerings for Duke and other Triangle-area students
COMMITMENT
There are two ways for students to get involved.
Justice Lab Fellows will be tasked with organizing and coordinating this work: keeping schedules, ensuring that trainings are completed, learning policies/procedures, organizing transportation, troubleshooting, thinking of new opportunities, and so on. At year’s end, the fellows will prepare a report, for use at Duke and other universities, to explain how Duke could and should be engaging with incarcerated populations.
Justice Lab Fellows will paid at a rate of $18.50/hr and will average 2.5 hours of work per week, though the workload will naturally be heavier at certain times than others. Fellows should expect to meet with the director once every two weeks or so.
Justice Lab Affiliates will be the lab’s core of volunteers. This work requires a commitment to the Justice Lab and to incarcerated people. Again, the idea is that this is a one-year commitment. Some opportunities do require a longer-term commitment.
Justice Lab Affiliates are expected to volunteer several hours a week.
We require reliability in our Fellows and Affiliates. This is not the kind of thing that you can skip, or be late for: it damages our relationship with the prison system, in addition to the incarcerated people we hope to serve. We ask students to only apply if they are sure they have time.
ELIGIBILITY
All Duke undergraduate students who are enrolled in classes at Duke during the 25–26 academic year are eligible to apply. If you are a graduate student who is interested, please write to the director, James Chappel, at james.chappel@duke.edu.
APPLY
If you would like to be involved in this program, please fill out an applicationat the link below. You can specify if you are applying to be a Justice Lab Fellow, Justice Lab affiliate, or both. The deadline for application is September 1, and we will have a Zoom informational session (not mandatory) on 1 PM on 28 August at this link. We will announce decisions on September 5.
The Kenan Institute for Ethics invites undergraduate students to apply for a new year-long fellowship program to launch this fall, Capacious Minds Fellows. Please note that the deadline to apply is Aug. 29, 11:59 p.m.
PROGRAM
Capacious Minds Fellows is a pilot program that aims to help undergraduate students develop “capacious minds” through multiple experiential practices, including
open-ended and non-linear modes of engagement, such as play;
embodied movements that reveal how our entire physical beings are involved in thinking, not just our brains; and
the cultivation of wonder through the observation of the natural world.
The fall semester will focus on these activities. While the spring semester’s content will depend in part on our assessment of the fall, it will center on curiosity and how it affects the way “capacious minds” engage with ideas and information.
This fellowship seeks to complement the traditional academic ways of thinking and learning that students develop in the university classroom. Its goal is to help students engage with the world in a deeper, more present, and more curious way, building their capacity to enjoy learning for learning’s sake.
The Capacious Minds Fellowship is part of Capacious Minds, a program of The Purpose Project at Duke that will launch during the 2025–2026 academic year.
COMMITMENT
Capacious Minds Fellows are expected to participate in weekly two-hour sessions over the course of 10–11 weeks during the Fall and Spring semesters.
Fall semester sessions are scheduled on Wednesday evenings from 5–7 p.m. and will run on the following dates: Sept. 10, Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct 1, Oct. 8, Oct. 22, Oct. 29, Nov. 5, Nov. 12, Nov. 19, and a closing session on Dec. 3. Spring semester sessions will be scheduled after taking the Fellows’ availability into account.
Students are expected to attend all sessions. In some cases, students may be able to miss one session per semester after prior communication with the program director.
These sessions represent the bulk of students’ commitment. Students are not expected to do significant reading or other work in their own time that would be in any way comparable to a course workload.
However, students will likely also be asked to
submit short weekly reflections in the format of their choosing (writing or audio),
complete two hours of volunteer work once during the semester, and
complete one experiential assignment on curiosity towards the semester’s end.
Because this is a pilot program, fellows will also be asked to help evaluate the content and structure of the program and suggest changes for future cohorts.
After completing the program, Capacious Minds Fellows will also be eligible to apply to be Fellowship mentors/facilitators for the following academic year.
ELIGIBILITY
All undergraduate students are eligible to apply.
AWARD
Fellows will receive $500 after successfully completing the Fall and Spring semesters of the program (for a total of $1000).
APPLY
To apply, please complete the following Qualtrics form. In addition to providing your name, Duke Unique ID, class year, and your availability to attend the scheduled sessions in the fall, we’ll ask you to write thoughtful answers to five open-ended questions.
If you have any questions about this program, please contact the director of the Capacious Minds Fellowship Program, Brooks Emanuel, at brooks.emanuel@duke.edu.
Brooks Emanuel has backgrounds in both (1) dance and choreography and (2) civil rights law, policy advocacy, and legislative and political work. He obtained his J.D. from NYU Law and his MFA in Dance from Duke University and has both performed at Symphony Space in New York City and drafted petitions to the United States Supreme Court. Among other roles, Brooks has had the great fortune to work for both Stacey Abrams (Georgia House Democratic Caucus) and Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), as well as serving as public policy director for Planned Parenthood Southeast. A large portion of his work in these realms focused particularly on challenging the injustices of the criminal legal system and protecting voting rights. In the dance world, he has performed with Michael Mao Dance, PearsonWidrig Dance, Beacon Dance, and Several Dancers Core, among others. In his current work, he seeks to bring all of these experiences to bear.
At the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Brooks creates and implements both curricular and cocurricular programming for undergraduates around radical imagination, expansive thinking, and strategies — including embodied and artistic — for changing the world. In addition to his work at Kenan, Brooks facilitates embodied movement workshops for social justice practitioners and creates performance works that investigate humans’ relationships to each other and the rest of the natural world.
CONTACT: Sarah Rogers
(919) 660-3035
sarah.rogers@duke.edu
DURHAM, N.C. – For seven weeks this summer, an experimental collective of artists and thinkers from Duke University’s Laboratory for Social Choreography will bring together hundreds of people in the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, in an exhibit unlike any other.
Its goal? To reimagine how we live.
“Parliament”is a pioneering work of social choreography — an emerging art form in which normal modes of human interaction are temporarily suspended, heightening our awareness of the political and social structures that shape our everyday lives. By creating a space in which people think and move differently, “Parliament” seeks to generate new, radically imaginative possibilities for society.
He knows that it sounds strange at first, but Laboratory for Social Choreography director, Duke professor and artist Michael Kliën says that imagining alternatives is the only sane response to our current moment, in which the seemingly inexorable systems that have produced climate change and extreme wealth disparities have many citizens feeling hopeless and stuck.
An internationally recognized artist and choreographer, Michael Kliën directs the Laboratory for Social Choreography at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Drawing on choreography, philosophy, political theory, and participatory art, the Lab develops embodied, experiential frameworks for confronting the social and ecological dead-ends of our time. Photo credit: Justin Cook.
“We’re stuck in a system that we’ve collectively built, but not many people seem to like very much,” says Kliën. “There’s this notion of ‘Well, there’s nothing else, so let’s just settle’ — as if we humans haven’t always invented and created our ways of living together.
“If the system is destroying our environment, destroying our attention, destroying our pleasure in life, then of course you would want to reform or change that system,” he continues. “It’s a symptom of insanity to just accept it because you can’t think of the alternative.”
For this task, he says, you need a broad collective. So the Laboratory for Social Choreography is working with community organizations across Athens to invite all kinds of people — refugees, cancer survivors, politicians, people with learning disabilities, and many others — to join “Parliament.” Anyone can sign up to participate.
Each day, new participants will come into the exhibit space to enact “Parliament.” After a fifteen-minute briefing, they will be left to roam around for three hours or more, all of them bound by the same conditions: they will not speak, or lean on the walls, or play with their shoes. And they will definitely not look at their phones.
What unfolds over the next few hours is anyone’s guess, but “Parliament” often leads participants to a new awareness of themselves and their relation to others — but without the identity markers that typically divide us. Kliën says as much as it’s possible to do so, it strips people down to a state of “pre-identity.”
Even if participants lie down on the floor and go to sleep — which they sometimes do — Kliën says that “Parliament” forces them to confront their own agency.
“What really shows up is the potential that we stand in simply by being in the world,” he says. “It makes you aware of how it’s been reduced in scope by the social system that we’re in. That might not make you happy. But it might open up space for you to say ‘What am I going to do about it?’”
Kliën first conceptualized “Parliament” in 2011, against the backdrop of mass anti-austerity demonstrations in Athens that followed Greece’s debt crisis. It was first exhibited at the Benaki Museum in 2014. Since then, it has evolved in design and scope through new iterations across Europe and the United States, and it has seeded new social choreographic works “Amendment,” “Constitution,” and “Inauguration” as part of the Laboratory for Social Choreography’s ongoing research.
Kliën says it’s apt that “Parliament” is returning to Benaki — and to Athens, the birthplace of democracy — during a time when many are sounding fears about the deteriorating state of democracy worldwide.
“When it’s under threat, rather than saying, ‘Let’s hunker down in our institutions,’ ‘Parliament’ is saying, ‘No, let’s push the boat out and see what’s out there,’” Kliën says.
From June 11–July 27, 2025, “Parliament” runs at the Benaki Museum in Athens from 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. on Thursdays and Sundays and 11:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Guides — including Duke students in the community engagement program DukeEngage — will serve as a first point of contact for museum visitors, and will help them enter and navigate the exhibit space.
The Character Forward Fellows Program invites Pratt undergraduate students to explore the ethical and character dimensions of engineering through a focused spring-semester learning community. Fellows will examine how technology shapes humanity—and how engineers can shape technology with wisdom, justice, courage, and discipline. Participants will take a seminar on Ethics & Technology and join a small cohort of peers, faculty, alumni, and industry leaders committed to developing engineers of character who will leverage technology for the good of humanity.
Pursuing Purpose is a fellowship program that allows Duke undergraduate students to develop their purpose through a seminar taken in the spring semester that connects to an internship or substantial work experience over the summer. Students who are interested in exploring a curricular pivot or a kind of work they have not yet had an opportunity to try are particularly encouraged to apply for this fellowship.
The Prison Engagement Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics invites undergraduate students to apply to become Justice Lab fellows and affiliates. Please note that the deadline to apply is September 1, 11:59 p.m.
The Kenan Institute for Ethics invites undergraduate students to apply for a new year-long fellowship program to launch this fall, Capacious Minds Fellows. Please note that the deadline to apply is Aug. 29, 11:59 p.m.
