Through curricular and co-curricular programs, The Purpose Project invites students into learning communities that cultivate habits of heart, mind, and action, with the aim of helping them flourish during and beyond their time at Duke. By foregrounding ethical and existential concerns, it provides students opportunities to reflect on their lives in intellectually challenging and rewarding ways, both examining the values that have shaped their lives so far and deciding what matters most to them in their current and future pursuits.

On a broader scale, The Purpose Project seeks to reshape the culture of education at Duke by tempering both the instrumental, pre-professional tendencies of undergraduate education and the credentialing narrowness of graduate and professional training. The overarching goal is to help all students navigate pathways toward vocations that are not only personally meaningful but contribute to the betterment of society.

The Purpose Project is a collaboration between the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Office of the Provost. It is funded by The Duke Endowment.

What if your classes not only shaped the way you thought but also the way you lived? What Now? The Duke Guide to Happiness, Purpose & Well-Being offers seminars designed to help you develop the tools and capacities to thrive at Duke and beyond.

Research across multiple disciplines suggests that students—and working adults—perform best when they are authentically connected to their work and to the people around them. What Now? classes are an opportunity for every student to consider what drives them, to learn habits that may help them succeed, and to have fun along the way.

Pursuing Purpose offers a curricular bridge to direct work experience over the summer. Each year, currently sophomores and juniors apply to take Pursuit of Purpose, a one-credit interdisciplinary seminar designed to hone students’ personal sense of purpose, situate that ethos in the contemporary world of work, and provide practical steps for moving forward. By semester’s end, each fellow has a funded internship placement for the summer, during which they will continue to reflect on questions raised in the course. Students design and participate in a Purpose Symposium upon returning to campus in the fall.

ReMed seeks to foster the character, imagination, and practices needed to work effectively in contexts of human suffering and healing. Leaders in many disciplines — history, ethics, visual and performing arts, spirituality, and expressive writing, as well as doctors and other healthcare professionals from a range of specialties—help students explore themes often absent in traditional medical education.

Teaching on Purpose brings doctoral students and faculty together to explore what it means to be a good teacher of undergraduates and to learn educational practices that will help their students flourish. This program is an opportunity for graduate students to cultivate their own sense of purpose as aspiring teachers who soon will be (and maybe already are) playing a vital role in the flourishing of undergraduates.