The Moreau First Year Experience — a distinctive component of a Notre Dame education — will soon expand to a broader program to include undergraduate students beyond their first year of study.
William C. Mattison III, professor of moral theology, has been appointed as the inaugural faculty director of the expanded Moreau Program.
Mattison said the initial Moreau seminar for freshmen will still take place during their fall semester, but the second one-credit seminar — currently taken in the spring — will be repositioned to later in a student's course of study. He said the second seminar may take place in the fall of students’ senior year, and it will focus on the theme of “a life well lived” as related to their field of study.
Additionally, the Moreau Program Committee is looking to integrate co-curricular activities and experiential learning opportunities into the seminars.
“We imagine that the credit-bearing seminars will be a bit more academic with greater faculty involvement ... we anticipate the co-curricular activities will be integrated with the seminar as to content and timing,” Mattison said.
The current Moreau program will continue for this academic year and next, according to Mattison.
“Since all current students will have taken their second one-credit course by the end of this spring, the [second seminar] would not apply to current students,” he added.
However, Mattison said all of these changes, along with their specific details, have yet to be confirmed.
Andrew Whittington, a Moreau instructor and associate director of first year programs, noted the expansion is the product of an ongoing process to improve the course for students.
“For the past few years, we’ve gradually implemented significant improvements ... on a variety of levels. These improvements have been the result of the thoughtful and deliberate work of hundreds of individuals and formative feedback from both students and faculty. These moves and partnerships have helped inspire the expansion of the program,” he said.
Whittington said it will build on the integration of academic and co-curricular formation that Notre Dame uniquely offers.
“This expansion is a big move on behalf of the students of Notre Dame. The aim is to better equip students to encounter and engage with a coherent, integrative four-year undergraduate experience,” Whittington said.
Freshman Cameron Thompson offered his support for the new framework.
“The biggest limit to Moreau right now is that it’s just a 50-minute conversation once a week. I think [the experiential opportunities] would definitely add a lot, especially because a big part of Moreau is the connection you form with the other people there,” Thompson said.
Looking ahead, Thompson said delaying the second one-credit course would provide a meaningful balance to the academic rigor of other classes.
“It is definitely nice to have a course ... that forces yourself to take some time to have a conversation that is more personal,” he said. “I think it’d be really useful to have something that helps balance out tough academic studies.”
In a similar vein, Whittington said moving the second course will be valuable for upperclassmen who are concluding their educational journey at Notre Dame.
“When combined with other components of the program, [it] can serve as a kind of final capstone that validates all of the life that has been lived at Notre Dame,” Whittington said. “The repositioning of this credit could serve as a timely way for students to reconnect with what really matters to them, reflect on who or what has most formed them at ND, and prepare to intentionally integrate all of what they've learned and experienced with their lives after graduation.”
Moving forward in his role as faculty director, Mattison said, “It is my hope that the Moreau Program seminars and activities can serve as an inflection point, situating and illuminating various dimensions of life at Notre Dame and beyond.”
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