Virtues & Vocations, Part 25: The Role of Joy

Episode Topic: The Role of Joy

Cameron Kim is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University and Laura Dunham is dean of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas. Listen in for a conversation about the nature of joy with these authors that contributed to the spring 2026 edition of the Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing magazine.

Featured Speakers:

• Cameron Kim, Duke University
• Laura Dunham, University of St. Thomas

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/d0d413.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Virtues & Vocations.

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Transcript

Welcome and the Guests' Paths

1 0:06

Greetings everyone. Welcome to our webinar, Virtues and Vocations: Conversations on Character and the Common Good. In this series, we share conversations about how education and work can promote human flourishing. This series is part of Virtues and Vocations, a national forum that is housed at the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame and supported by the Kern Family Foundation Virtues and Vocations seeks to foster a community of practice amongst scholars and practitioners across disciplines who are keen to understand how best to cultivate character and moral purpose in higher education and the professions. This webinar series is one way we facilitate these conversations. I am Suzanne Shanahan, and I direct the Institute for Social Concerns and I'm host for this series. Today, this web- webinar is a bit of a crossover event. We are hosting two authors from our latest issue of the Virtues and Vocations magazine. The theme for this spring edition is joy, and we are truly delighted to be joined today by Duke University engineering professor Cameron Kim and St. Thomas Dean of the Opus College of Business School, Laura Dunham. Both wrote essays for this issue. Both have written es- essays that I found delightfully restorative and inspiring, filled with nuggets of genuine wisdom. Welcome to you both.

Speaker 2 1:43

Thank you so much, Suzanne.

1 1:45

Thanks for having us. Laura Dunham is the Opus Distinguished Chair and Dean of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, where she has served in multiple leadership roles for the past two decades. Her research focuses on the ethical and managerial challenges of innovation and has appeared in outlets such as The Harvard Business Review, The Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly. She, uh, co-founded a national consortium with Stanford and Duke to train scholars and business leaders to navigate ethical issues in entrepreneurship. Cameron Kim is an assistant professor of the practice in biomedical engineering and the associate director of undergraduate studies at Duke University, associate faculty in Duke Science and Societies Initiative, and a member of the Duke Center for Advanced Genomic Tech-Technologies. He is co-director of the Biomedical Engineering Education and Teaching Lab, BEETLE, that's a very good acronym, uh, where his current work bridges biotechnology education and ethical responsibility, focusing on equipping future engineers with the tools to address ethical challenges in emerging technologies like gene and cell-based therapies. So welcome to you both, and thanks again for joining me today. Um, I would love to jump in and ask of you, each of you, maybe starting with Laura, to take a couple of minutes and share with the audience sort of how you came to this work, uh, at the Opetz College of Business and at Duke University. Sort of what's, what's the background motivation for you, uh, in this work?

Speaker 2 3:39

Yeah. Um, well, thank you so much, Suzanne. Thank you for having me here. Um, I would just say my background is rather circuitous, a r- circuitous route to get here. I tell my students all the time who are fearful about making that first choice after graduation, that I was a bit of a professional vagabond myself and found my way. So, um, so I did a number of things when I left school. I was a liberal arts kid, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, worked on Capitol Hill for a little while, worked in advertising for a little while, and throughout my life, I'd always been involved in theater. So when I was in my 20s, a couple friends and I started a theater company that became quite successful in my hometown of, uh, Richmond, Virginia. Um, and it was at that moment actually that I became exposed to business for the first time because we were an entrepreneurial venture. We had to find funding, we had to market, we had to build an organization. Um, and when we eventually merged with the large, uh, theater in town, we were their second stage, I decided I wanna go to business school of all things. Um, and so I did. I went to the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business, uh, met my husband there, went off and worked in consulting for a few years, and then came back to get my PhD. So, um, I've had, as I say, a circuitous route, but I think the theme that holds it all together is, uh, I'm a real believer in human agency, in creativity, in entrepreneurship. Um, and as a liberal arts major, I was always a little suspect of some of the stuff going on in business, so I always really wanna understand how we infuse not only creative and entrepreneurial thinking in business, but ethical thinking. Um, that brought me to Tom Byers and Jon Feld, Feld at, uh, Duke University. Uh, Tom is at Stanford, and we sort of met and talked about what it means to be an, a, you know, uh, an entrepreneur who also cares about the, the ethical issues that they're confronting. So I'll stop there. Um, I think you get, get an idea. And I've been at St. Thomas for 23 years, so I've managed to find a home that embraces creativity, thought, strategic thinking, and, and ethics, so...

1 5:43

Well, that is quite a journey- from liberal arts theater all the way to business school, so fabulous. I love that. Uh, Cameron, how about you?

Speaker 3 5:53

I first of all just have to say that I also had my, my quick little theater stint when I was an undergrad, and I think that that also has helped a little bit just with some of the presentation and the work that you get to do as a faculty member, particularly, um, with teaching. Um, I think maybe just to slightly contrast, um, Laura's, you know, I feel like my journey, at least to my current position here at Duke, was actually very linear in kind of the weirdest of ways. It's, it's almost like the ideal, right? I started my undergrad. I was here at Duke for my undergraduate. Right next then I went on to my PhD at, at Stanford in bioengineering. It took, I, I... Three months later from graduation to the start of my PhD, and I was privileged to, uh, start my faculty position here at Duke right after my PhD. Granted, it was July 2020 when that started, so it was a, um, it was an interesting start to any faculty member's career But I then sort of, you know, I think about where I've been for the past six years as a faculty member at Duke, and that's been just the most nonlinear pathway, um, ever. You know, and I always tell the students as well, like, you know, I'm a hypocrite in some regards because of how linear my journey was to here. But I find that as I'm at this point in my career, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be, you know? And I think that what has kept-- what has been the stable disposition is truly finding an excitement for learning, finding a joy in what's going on in the world, keeping my mind open to the different technologies, the different tools, and the work that we, the work that we have going on. But what I learned in my PhD and even in my undergraduate, um, as an engineer, is that we, we rarely get time to actually pause. We rarely get time to reflect on the why of what we're doing. And it's sort of that line of, I think it's Jurassic Park, you know, sometimes the scientists thought so hard whether we could, whether then we-- that, that they actually stopped to think whether we should. And I found that as part of the-- a lot of the immersion technologies in my PhD from CRISPR genome editing to cellular-based therapies, we see this with the CRISPR babies, um, uh, case study in twenty seventeen out of China. We see a lot of this, and I saw it in my own lab, that we never really got the chance to pause and reflect. And, and I think that as I've started to explore my research career and thinking about how do we as engineers approach these challenges with a lens of curiosity, with a lens of humility, and, you know, in service to these technologies that we don't know what they are yet, and that the jobs and the technologies that even exist just five years from now, we don't know what they are yet. Being able to work together amongst different, uh, groups to address that and really look within ourselves as the engineers, I think puts us in a spot of excitement and I hope joy in as we explore those challenges.

1 8:42

Wonderful.

Why Write About Joy

1 8:43

Um, I'd, I'd love you, each of you to reflect a little bit on how you came to the, the particular formulation of the essays that you wrote. Um, neither of you do research on joy. Um, so was this an unusual ask, a disconcerting ask? Or I'm thinking about joy all the time, and this is just an outlet to e-engage in it. Maybe Cameron and then Laura, you could jump in.

Speaker 3 9:14

Yeah, I, I would say we don't really talk a lot about joy in engineering. Um, that is not something that, that really comes up. Um, so when I was asked, and I, I'm honored to be, to be asked, um, I had to sit there. I don't think I responded to the email for like three or four days. I'm like, well, what joy have I experienced in engineering? Or maybe just, maybe it's just never been discussed frankly, and I think that's kind of what I learned as part of this process of writing this essay, is that we don't really discuss this idea of joy, of flourishing, of, of being able to understand that, you know, I think we think of joy as this like happy and, and, you know, feels good, and that's im- important, but joy is so much more sustained. It's a creative, is a resilience outlet that allows us to understand, uh, ultimately the purposes of what we do. A- and the framing, frankly, when I started to kind of brainstorm, um, and it's, you know, I title it Joy as an Engine, because everything that we talk about in engineering is on a cycle. We talk about the design, build, test, learn cycle. We talk about, uh, engine cycles, and that's sort of where this comes from, is thinking about how an internal combustion engine sparks the fuel to drive the car, drive the machine. And, and I'd be curious, Laura, thinking about cycles, I'm sure we talk about a- agile cycles in business, and we talk about this, this idea that what we do is an iterative reflective process. And, and so once I sort of frankly latched onto this idea of cycles, um, it became really easy, but it reminded me of a lot of the journeys that I've had that, you know, you'd, in the moment something g- goes wrong and you're mad and you're frustrated, a- and then you just, it takes a lot of introspection to realize, okay, there was something there. And sometimes hindsight's 20/20, but I felt like that was the, the story that I got. It's like when I look back at those moments that maybe I had dread or fear I should also experience the joy of that. And so I think that's kind of where I was able to lean in with this topic, um, leveraging something that I think every engineer knows is a cycle. We love a cycle.

1 11:28

That's great. How about you, Laura?

Joy in Learning, Purpose, and Growth

Speaker 2 11:30

Uh, actually, you know, I've never studied joy, uh, you know, from an academic perspective, but I think about it all the time, and I think about it more and more since I've gone into leadership roles at Opus. Um, one of the things I always felt innately in teaching, um, and how I characterized joy in the article, is that there's something that happens in learning that is such an expansion of self that is so alive. You know, it's about this becoming somebody... We're always a work in progress, right? But education is about saying, "Here's-- You are becoming. You are in the process of becoming. You are in the process of, of, uh, of being able to do more than you ever thought." And it's, it's sort of a stretching of the self, but it's also sort of you's a-always in communion with other people, right? We're, we're collaborating together. We're, we're experiencing something because of being together that we hadn't been able to do before. Um, and so I've always felt it in the classroom, this sense of, um... I've always been very proactive, you know, sort of very experiential in the classes, and I was teaching entrepreneurship. And you know, there's a lot that's obviously, you know, there's financial, there's strategic, there's operational, but there's a part of, uh, entrepreneurship, the design thinking part of finding ideas, um Of stretching yourself to take a risk and share your idea in front of other people, and to explore this open-ended, messy problem. That is so incredible to see students go through. We have a lot of, um, entrepreneurship, uh, competitions here, and one of the great joys is being there and seeing those students come off the stage and go, "I never thought I could do that," you know? I, I... It was my idea. I studied it. I came up with it. I, I shared it. I was prepared. And, and it's something that you never, ever l-lose, that sense of agency, creativity, capability, that sense I have really grown. And so it's always been something that has sparked, I probably-- why I've been in this business for 23 years when I moved around so much, always looking for the joy. And it is one of the reasons I feel really grateful to be in this vocation, because I think we are traveling with our students on that journey of becoming, of stretching, of expanding who we are. Um, and I think as we go through sort of challenging times in higher ed, it's also important to remember that we as communities of educators, we as institutions, also have to become, to change, to confront the challenges, and not to be cowed by them or discouraged by them, but to see them as another opportunity of agency. And I don't mean to trivialize the challenges we're going through, because we certainly are, you know, in higher ed. But it's also the ultimate creative task to come together as a community and say, "The world is changing. What does excellence in teaching mean now? What does excellence in research mean?" When ChatGPT, you know, um, can pull together a lecture, how do we create experiences that help our students become, that really are transcendent and transformational? So, um, I was really delighted when you asked me to write about this. I talk about it a lot, um, and I've never really formulated my thinking behind it. So-- And I, I will say I really appreciate reading the issue too, and, and would really encourage everybody to, because I just love all the different perspectives that the authors are bringing to it. Just really enriched my own understanding of joy, um, and, um, gives you stuff to really sit with and think about. So I, I have really appreciated being part of this whole process.

1 15:20

Wonderful. Laura, I'd love to dig in on a couple of pieces of your essay that I found just really striking and, and the first one is really how you set it up at, you know, sort of this notion of a new year- Yeah um, and the orientation of students. And y- um, you have this quote where you say, "Each September, as the first cool notes of autumn enter the air, I am reminded of the joyous fact that those of us who work in higher education get to live by the rhythm of our childhoods."

Speaker 2 15:52

Yeah.

1 15:53

Every fall brings a fresh start, a new academic year, new students, new hopes and possibilities, new opportunities to grow." And, um, as someone who absolutely loves the first day of class every single year, um, I'm just reminded of the privilege of this opportunity and this possibility for renewal and the hope that that brings each year. Can you, uh, can you talk a little bit about the other thread that you have, uh, throughout the article, which is about purpose and the relationship between joy and purpose? Because I think it connects to this sense of renewal that you're talking about.

Speaker 2 16:37

For sure. And I think many times we conflate joy with happiness, and happiness is a great thing. We all like to be happy. Tends to be more fleeting. It tends to be more sort of focused on pleasure. I think joy is that kind of Sense of aliveness and lift- Yeah that is connected to something deeper, that helps us feel like, oh, this is really right in the world. Um, and, and, and our purpose as educators bringing in young people, and sometimes, you know, in the MBA programs, people who are early-ish in their career but older, but really at that point where they say, "Supercharge me. Help me rethink who I am and where I'm going," these are all, you know, um, milestone poi- pivot points in people's lives. And to be able to help our students to see themselves as works in progress, who are capable of growing, who are capable of expanding, who are capable of helping other people in the room with them do the same thing by sharing their ideas, by listening generously, um, that is, that's an exciting thing. When I was a kid, I loved the summer. And you know, you always have that moment, you're like, "Ugh, it's all over," you know? "I have to go back to work." But there was also that real animal thrill of, oh my gosh, the bus is coming. Oh, I have my new book bag. Oh, I have my... There's gonna be new people there. Oh, you know, there's this, this freshness, this excitement, this childlike joy that happens. And every fall, I feel it. I've mentioned it to our faculty. You know, I feel, I feel like I have a fresh book bag. I can smell those new books. I can just, you know- I remember what was that, that was like. Um, and, and to be able to say every year we get that renewal, we get that new journey with new students, um, is such a privilege, and it never, to me, grows old. So, um A- and I think even as a child, you recognize at some level something new is gonna happen to me, something, something exciting and fresh, and I'm gonna be different, and I'm growing up and, you know, all these things. So, um, we get to be reminded of that. Um, even as stale old adults, we get to- come into a room with fresh faces and say, "Let's all grow together." And I always felt like I learned, you know. So, and I think our faculty feel that way as well. Um, so yeah, so I think joy as being something connected to that deep, important core human purpose. Uh, doesn't matter how old you get, I've lived a long time, you know, you constantly are becoming, and that is, uh, I, I think maybe one of the purposes of life, the core purposes of life, and to be connected to that through education is a real gift.

1 19:32

That's beautiful. Um, the other thing, and I think you alluded to this previously, this notion, and I think Cameron as well picks up on this, is that there's, uh, something joyful in things that are hard.

Speaker 2 19:46

Hmm.

1 19:46

And I think when you talked about students pursuing a project, I often, um, reflect on writing a senior thesis as an undergraduate, and it being the hardest thing I had done as an undergraduate. But it, to this day, is the most meaningful thing I've done as an academic, right? That the joy and engagement and thrill of the curiosity I felt is something that, quite frankly, has been hard to replicate. It's sort of like, you know, sort of your first experience with that is just so electrifying. Um, h- how can-- how do we help, um, students in particular reconcile the challenges of the hard with the joy from your perspective?

Speaker 2 20:35

Uh, uh, and I think this is one of the things I, I always try to say to our students, and I know our faculty do as well, which is, this is gonna be hard, and if it isn't hard, then you're wasting your time here- because you already knew it. I really do believe that joy comes out of effort and challenge. I can be happy doing something easy, and that is fleeting, and I don't... You know, I love being happy, you know, but true joy that gives you that sense of aliveness, that sense of true human lift, is because you have come out on the other side of something that really challenged you, you know? And, um- I love y- your, your interview with Alain de Botton, who says, you know, we-- And this is, I think, is, is true for how we need to think about our students. We've-- I don't, I don't wanna paraphrase him incorrectly, but this notion that we've started pathologizing, uh, sorrow- Mm-hmm uh, you know, hard things. Um, they are a part and parcel of life, right? When you know you're on that journey, and these are, these are waypoints you will go through at some point. But on the other side is a different person who's experienced the world in much richer, deeper ways and who will see what they come to next in those much deeper, richer ways. That's-- Now, I'm not gonna say I've never quoted Alain de Botton 'cause I hadn't really read him much, but I will- after your interview 'cause I thought it was so interesting. But this notion that challenging yourself is growth, and growth is, is life, you know? So let's not be afraid of it. You know, let's, let's engage it, um, and feel the joy that comes out. And I, I see that so often with students who go, "I never knew I could do that. It was so hard, and I was so scared, but I feel Something special right now The extraordinary

Speaker 3 22:37

And if I, if I may- Yep I, I think that it's also something that we as educators have to model. We have to be able to share that conversation with students. Um, I, um... I'm privileged to have one of my, um, great colleagues, uh, Christian Ferny here at the Kenan Institute for Ethics that, that always says, you know, "Ask the students what textbook Apple is using to build the iPhone," or, you know, which problem in chapter three are they using to, you know, make the better, you know, Google Eng- well, now they're all using ChatGPT, I guess, to search for everything. So which, which problem is gonna solve that? That these are hard problems, and that when we give, I, I'll say hard problems, right? We give ill-structured problems because that's what engineering is. That's what business is. You know, that's what meta- that's what all of our disciplines that I think we all talk about in the magazine. You know, these are all just the challenges of life, and the more that we can model, the more that we can comfort and provide that assistance, and also for us to replicate that same joy that we fee- we felt, and hopefully still do feel when we engage with ill-structured problems. I think that that's an important part of the practice of education, and I think it also should permeate in every discipline, in every industry that we have available to us.

Engineering Barriers and Ethics

1 24:02

So to pick up on that a little bit, Cameron, um, you have this wonderful line about the nature of engineering education where you say, "We reward rigor, not curiosity, efficiency, not awe." And so it, you know, at, at many points it f- it feels in your articulation that there are significant structural barriers to the kind of, um, lived experience you are trying to forward. You know, you start with this just profound line where you say, "The mechanical and the moral are intertwined," right? And, you know, I wonder if we surveyed the universe of engineering educators, how many w- would think that or would, more importantly, enact that on a daily basis? What do you see within engineering education as barriers to the really eloquent vision you're offering?

Speaker 3 25:05

Well, I, we don't have to look too far to actually look at the research and what the literature tells us around what is happening within engineering education. Um, Aaron Sech's, um, Culture of Disengagement in Engineering Education from 2013 highlights that no matter where our engineers are coming from, whether it is the largest of public schools or the smallest of private schools in engineering, that our engineers are leaving with less will toward humanity. They are leaving without the same care of society, right? That there is something systemic within the engineering education structures that does not reward awe. It does not reward joy. It doesn't reward curiosity. A- and this has been, you know, followed up. We have many evidence of, uh, students in, in being interviewed saying, you know, it's "I'm torn between being a, a good student, a good thinker, and a good engineer." That clearly something says that these are not the same identity. We see this in so many different cases, and I think it requires us, especially those of us that hopefully did find joy in engineering through our research, through our coursework, it really requires us to reflect and understand why is that the case. I think it's because it's, you know, first of all, it, it's easy to, uh, you know, discretize a lot of engineering problems. It's, it's easy to say that solving this equation or memorizing this formula is what engineering is, and I think that sure, that's a part of the, the problem. But it's exactly that. It is a part. It is not the whole. And the more that we are able to recognize that all of the decisions that we make as engineers are both technical And moral and ethical that the decision to use titanium versus ceramic as a, a hip replacement is one of technicality, which is the better material which leads to better host immune response interactions. But also, where does that titanium come from? We are not alchemists yet, and so we have yet to just, you know, apparate titanium. It comes from places where there is subjugation of child labor. We need to think about that more, and we also not just need to think about that, we need to teach that too. And so a lot of the efforts that we have been trying to work on here at Duke in biomedical engineering is to integrate ethics everywhere throughout our curricula because we recognize that these are not different scenarios. These are not different dilemmas. We want the best of technology. That also requires wanting the best of humanity. And I think the more that we are able to continue that conversation and foster that, to recognize that they are one and the same, I think that when we train our engineers for these future technologies that don't exist today, we may be able to actually have that human element get ri- get out of that culture of disengagement

Speaker 2 28:15

And, and if, if I might just ju-jump in there, I mean, I think in this day and age, as we're watching AI, um, you know, um, and, and not again, knowing where exactly it's headed, I say to my students, "Don't set yourself up to be a technician." You know? ChatGPT can be a technician. Claude can be a technician. It is about the human and how we incorporate these tools into a richer way of thinking about what they're trying to accomplish and who they're gonna impact and, uh, the long-term consequences. So I, I think it's more important than ever, than it has ever been. I do remember years ago when I first came in talking to a colleague who had been at St. Thomas for a long time and, you know, and, you know, lecture, lecture, lecture, you know, kind of thing. And, and remember this person said, uh, "Well, this job is all about drilling content into students' heads," which I thought at the time was like, that's kind of violent sounding, you know? But also really deadly. You know, it, it is about teaching people to think, and as you say, Cameron, teaching them to think in very complex ways. Uh, you know, not just the technical, but the moral, um, and the human. And so I, I just think the place we're in right now demands it. I mean, we have no value in the future if we're not creating experiences where our students truly become complex human beings capable of handling open-ended questions in pro-social as well as, you know, business, you know, business valid, engineering valid, you know, but also pro-social, pro-human ways.

1 29:46

So one of the things in both of your essays that was so striking to me was the ways that joy and the cultivation of the human were inextricably linked from, um, the cultivation of the knowledge. So, you know, sort of taking this notion of drilling something into someone's head, or I've often heard people say, "My job is knowledge transfer. I don't do the other stuff, just knowledge transfer." Um, but for both of you, there was something about the, the act of engineering, the act of entrepreneurship, you know, that is, is simultaneously about cultivating the human. And you use this, Cameron, this Petroski quote where you say, "To engineer is, is, is human." And I wonder, um, how y- yeah, if you could talk a little bit more about that, because I do think it reflects a departure from historical engagements with ethics, both in engineering and in bus-business, which are about compliance, ethical, narrow ethical decision-making, whereas both of you seem to be Really reflecting on how do we allow, whether they're business students or engineering students, to flourish as humans wherever they go and whatever they do. So maybe Laura, I don't know if you have thoughts, or Cameron.

Speaker 2 31:20

Well, you know, when you were, uh, posing that question, it brought to mind a quote, and I'm sure I'm gonna get this wrong, I think it's Yeats. But he said, "How can we separate the dancer from the dance?" Right? You know, we are all who we work You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, we are, um... There's, there's not a separation between what we're doing as businesspeople and who we are as human beings. Um, a- and so as somebody who studied ethics, one of the things that always frustrated me was this notion of ethics as, as you say, as compliance, a side constraint, as- Yeah the party pooper, you know? Right. You could do this, but ethics says don't do that. You know, whereas if you look at it as fully constitutive of great and wise decision-making, it yields new truths to you about better ways to do things, about ways that, you know, that, that make the titanium question thoroughly embedded in that whole, you know, in that whole decision-making process. So I, I do think, um, our students have to embrace Ethics is who they are, you know? I mean, there's no such thing, you know... Entrepreneurship is an inherently ethical act. You know, when you think about how it's impacted at the societal level, at the organizational level, at the individual level, you know, every decision is rich with ethical content. And, and, and we have to celebrate that, and we have to educate people who recognize that and embrace that. Um, and so that, that is one of the great joys of being at a Catholic school. You know, we do get to wear our values on our sleeves, and we do get to say, "This matters." You know, does this advance the common good? Is this the kind of leader you wanna be? Wow, sounds like a great qu- you know, a great decision, but what are some other things you might wanna think about in terms of who it's impacting or what principles it's r- reflecting a- as you as a leader? So, um, yeah. That's great. Thank you. So I think we can't separate the person from the action. Mm-hmm. I love the Yates quote, so. I hope it's Yates.

1 33:29

Cameron?

Speaker 3 33:30

No, I would, I would just add on to that. I mean, I think that in engineering, I mean, just going back again to this, um, like, the separation that exists. I mean, again, this culture of disengagement that, that Erin talks about. It, it, there's a lot of research, and I can kind of hint at many different, many different folks, um, in this space that when we think about, uh, engineers that come from underrepresented backgrounds, um, you know, whatever that might be, that there is this push for the identity of being an engineer more important than their own identities, be it a female engineer or a Black engineer, that it's more important to be engineer first. And so by swiping away all of our humanity as part of this process of growing, you know, we-- this is something that we are cultivating in engineering education, and that is the concern when we say, you know, to engineer is human. Uh, I don't know, uh, unfortunately, I did not get to meet, um, Hammer Petroski before he passed away a few years ago, but I wonder how controversial that statement was when he wrote that book in 1991 Because I think that it's something that we, we foster as part of this. And I think that reminding ourselves of the humanity, reminding ourselves of our own identity, and reminding ourselves of our own role in flourishing for a better society. What I love about, um, what, what Henry does in the book as well, he, he talks about, of course, in civil... He's a civil engineer, and he, he was a civil engineer and history professor, which I think is just an amazing combination. I, I wish I could ever, ever had a combination like that. But he, he talks about these, you know, massive, uh, civil engineering disasters, uh, Tacoma Narrows, um, Kansas City Marriott Hotel skybridge, like all these different things. But then he talks about the Crystal Palace. He talks about some of the beautiful pieces of architecture that just you stand in awe and in beauty of, right? He talks about just the railroad networks and what it has meant for, you know, the post-industrial revolution and how it's led and inspired us to so many great things. And we see this with architecture, both modern and old, that, you know, these are, you know, in some regards, the signs of the feats of our own humanity, right? For, for better or for worse in some regards. And the more that we're able to reflect on that, I think the better that we can be to recognize that we are together. And I think that it's so easy to say that there is this sort of technosocial dualism in terms of how we approach our world as engineers. Like, oh, we're the technical, they're the social. That's it, right? Um, and I think that our cultures foster that, and we need to think about ways to do that because every engineering decision is, by its nature, an ethical one. And we need to be able to wrestle with that because otherwise someone down the road is going to decide it for us. And these unintended consequences that happen as a result will look disfavorably on the engineers that designed it, but also us as a, you know, us as humans

Mission, Values, and Higher Ed Today

1 36:42

Um, yeah, I'm just so taken, um, by the extent to which both of you very seamlessly integrate, um, this notion of flourishing into your conceptualizations in two spaces that, y- you know, you know this better than I, people don't usually think of as, um, engaging in questions of morality or humanity in, i- in a thoroughgoing way. And so I wonder, um, you know, Laura, you, you mentioned you're at a Catholic university. Um, to what extent do-- are you able to have conversations in that space that I-- you know, the, the national meetings you go to, uh, colleagues nationally, internationally are not having? Um, and do you find receptivity to those, the kind of conversations you feel you're able to have given the Catholic mission or not?

Speaker 2 37:44

You know, interesting. I think, and I've been, you know, at St. Thomas for 23 years, that, um, you're s- um, definitely seeing far more of a shift in this direction than we ever have before. And, and I think part of it is millennials and Gen Z, they care about purpose, meaning, sustainability, the ethical, you know, moral impacts of business, of engineering, of pol- you know, geopolitics. They care about that. Um, I think we've left ourselves some really big, big messes in our world because maybe we haven't factored some of those dimensions into our decision-making. And so I feel like I hear a lot more people talking about, how do we infuse this better? How do we, um, incorporate ethical thinking and, you know, the moral dimensions of business decisions? I, I just think it's a very different environment than it was. Uh, you know, I mean, finance, maximize, you know, the purpose of the firm is to maximize shareholder, you know, value. Uh, you know, and, and that can be a tough one, you know, to, to, to, to pry open a little bit. Um- But, you know, and, and I'm always like, "Let's try this one on for size. The purpose of the firm is to maximize human flourishing, actually." You know, we talk about that. Um, it, it, it opens a richer conversation, right? Shareholder value is a, a really arid metric, and, uh, potentially very dangerous one to be the to- the sole direction. But I feel like I'm having more of those conversations. You know, and when you can actually make a dent in the finance, you know, world- um, then, then you know people are saying, "What does it mean? How do we measure the impacts of decisions that we're making that might have harm? How do we bring people into the world to use all these technical skills but also recognize... So, so I, I think it's changing. I honestly do. Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel that. Um- In academia.

1 39:50

So Cameron, um, you were in an engineering school that's really trying to engage these questions pretty robustly. Um, but when you step out into the real world of engineering, uh, are you finding the same thing? And are you finding it, um, and correct me if I'm wrong, Laura, but that this in some ways is being driven by, uh, the students themselves, this new generation that's very committed to a set of values that's coming in? Um.

Speaker 3 40:22

Yeah, I, I would-- I mean, I'm fortunate here at Duke in the Pratt School of Engineering that we have a really concerted effort through a program called the Character Forward Initiative, uh, which allows us to really think about what does character look like across the four years of engineering education. And, uh, Dr. Rajiva, um, who his PhD is training is in philosophy, sits as the leader to allow us to really bring together the interdisciplinary talk that we must have in order to really wrestle with this conversation. So I'm really privileged, uh, to be at an institution with this. Um, I will say, I think outside, even at different institutions, let alone within sort of the discipline of engineering, you know, I, I think that, um, uh, a-and maybe this is a cynical viewpoint a little bit, but I think that we're, you know, we're all having this existent-- back to what Laura was saying, we're having this existential crisis around AI and education. And I think that we're tackling that, and, uh, as a tackling, and I'm using that word a little, uh, loosely and facetiously right now because I think that we're all dealing with this existential nature of what does this mean. And instead of, you know, a-and I think that there are responsible ways to innovate in the space of education and engineering and all of this, but instead of being reflective, instead of understanding what's going on, instead of really convening stakeholders, I think frankly a lot of us are reacting, right? Which that reactivity is going to create a lot of challenges about how we actually prepare this next generation of students and engineers for this new technology. And I think it's gonna create a culture of reactivity to any immersion technology. And I think this shows up in, you know, many social sciences spaces, including the pacing problem and, and other situations like that where, you know, and maybe this is also just academia in itself, is that we're all tackling the first problem that we can see immediately, and so there we go, right? Um, whereas I think if we were to really think about- character and virtue and what is our vocation of engineering? What does it mean to serve society and humanity? I think that we'd be able to ask better questions around how do we handle this new technology? How do we handle the future of technology, and what does our discipline stand for? I think that that's something that I wish we were doing better about right now, um, 'cause it doesn't, you know-- It, it's going, I think right now it'll lead to a lot of inhibitions of what does a good engineer do?

Speaker 2 42:58

A- and I wanna say also, because I've had the great, good privilege of working with Ed Freeman, um, he was one of my advisors at UVA. You know, people call him the godfather, the grandfather, the father, maybe doesn't wanna say grandfather, uh, um- of, of stakeholder theory, one of the first people to really explore that as, um, you know, as a construct that we can use to embed more ethical thinking in the way we make decisions. And, and I, I have to say, there's been a field of people I've been really privileged to work with who de- for decades have been having these conversations, and not just at the academy, but with business leaders and, um, and managers in, in, in the middle of organizations. And, and I think-- So, so what I think is great is they're no longer whistling, uh, you know, against the wind or whatever because what they're talking about... And, and I-- you know, the, the field has grown because of m- major ethical mishaps decades ago, right? Um, this notion that business had to be more responsible, had to be, you know, thinking more deeply and richly about the impacts of their decisions. Um, so, so, so I do think there's been a lot of pioneers in that, um, and academics, and academics that they have raised to go on and have these conversations. So I, I think, you know, we in the, you know, the academy should be proud of the fact that there's l- lot of people thinking about these things. When it becomes extra delightful is when, you know, you see the younger people coming in and saying, "We embrace this. This is so right." Yep. You know?

Speaker 3 44:33

And I would just say as well, back to kinda your question, Suzanne, yes, I think the students are driving a lot of this within engineering education, and that amount of introspection is really important. And I think it does require us as faculty to be retrospect-- you know, to really think like what does this mean, so that we can be prospective about how do we better prepare for these new challenges.

1 44:56

Great. So, um, I wanna talk a little bit, and Laurie, you alluded to this, and it's, uh, the way you end your essay about the kind of state of higher education. And I just wanna share, um, with Cameron and the audience this particular quote that I loved. You say, "In times like this, joy, the joy of our mission becomes our engine. It reminds us that the heart of that mission is not stability, but transformation. It reminds us that the continually, the continual unfolding of human potential means our..." Oops, uh, means our-- Kinda lost it there Um, reminds us, um, the heart of our mission is not stability but transformation. It reminds us that the continual unfolding of human potential means our own as well as students'. It reminds us to double down on that mission to nurture learning, foster discovery, expand and grow. And this gives us courage to reimagine what education can be and who we can be as educators. When we approach uncertainty this way, not as a threat but as a possibility rooted in mission, we can reanimate that joy, that aliveness, that optimism that always accompanies growth and the expansion of the self. Joy becomes the driver and the outcome, which I just think is such an elegant and eloquent way to kind of put a, a counter to the kind of current hysteria around higher education. And wonder if each of you could reflect just a smidge on this moment and how your own work is a response to this moment in higher education, where many things seem to have gone off the rails

Speaker 2 46:49

I, I, I think you can never minimize the challenges we're facing, and we have to be realists, right, about the big challenges. You know, not just AI, but you know, the demographic cliff and, uh, you know, the lower propensity of high school s- you know, seniors to go to school. I mean, there's just a lot of things that we're confronting, and it can feel daunting. Um, but what excites me the most is we've never ever had so much, um, been-- had so much impetus, demand, mandate to really reimagine who we are, what we do, and how we create value in the world. Um, the educational experience in a world of AI simply has to change. That's the burning platform. The exciting part is that means we get to engage together, and our faculty, I, I have to say, our faculty have, I, I, I really leaped into this. You know, I, I mentioned in the article our Opus Way, which is the faculty grappling with what are the principles that have to guide how we create experiences that are AI proof. Not, not teaching students how to te- use AI, but that have meaning and value outside of what you can get from a ChatGPT or a Claude or whoever. Um, to be at a point in time when you are required to innovate is a gift, you know? Um, it's so easy to slide along in our conventional wisdoms about what we should do and how we should do it. We can't do that anymore. Um, and that is a little daunting, but it's also really exciting 'cause there's nothing more human than facing change and saying, "How do we flourish by embracing this change and bringing something new into the world?" So, um, truly, I feel like, um, there's a lot at play here, but also so much opportunity as educators to do what we hope to do for our students, which is to become, to grow, to transform ourselves and what we do, um, which is, I think, ultimately a really joyous, you know, challenge and, and process of collaboration that we'll, we will have to engage in.

1 49:08

Wonderful. Cameron? Do you have thoughts, Laura?

Speaker 3 49:13

In a res-- in researching on curiosity and humility and sort of how it shows up in engineering and particularly how it shows up in our students, you know, I, I really feel that more my, my purpose is, uh, you know, to really continue to create these sparks. To Laura's point, I... Teaching this, you know, formula is, is great, and I teach formulas in math because I think math is beautiful. But what, what will stand out for our students is that they have that drive, that they have that continu- that, that gut curiosity, the want to continuously improve who they are as people. And I think that the, you know, being able to center a lot of what we do and making sure that if through our exercises, through our conversations, through our reflection, to never diminish that curiosity. We know it's diminishing. We have evidence, at least in K12 education, and we're gonna hit more cliffs if we continue to let AI solve all of our problems, whatever that might look like. Whether they does it well is a different issue entirely. I think that it's the time for us to really think about our pedagogies. I think it's really a time for us to think about the why. Who do we want our engineers, who do we want our business leaders to be in five years? Not, what do I want for them to remember from my class? I think that that's going to help us to really center around why we do what we do. How do we foster, for me, this curiosity to continue to learn, to, you know, lifelong learn and to push against some of the anti-intellectualism. But also, exactly as this magazine highlights, is to find the joy in the work that we do, to find the joy and the excitement in the unknown, and that this future should not be filled with fear, but with wonder.

1 51:00

That's

Speaker 2 51:00

beautiful. Life is too short. You know, I, I love this, this, this quote in Angela Gorrell's, uh, article. She says, "Cultivating the joy is about attunement to the good." You know? And even in hard times, there's so much good, and we have to train ourselves to be finding it. Life is too short. We have to find the joy, you know?

1 51:23

Wonderful.

Teaching Practices for Joy

1 51:24

Um, there are a couple questions teeing up, and so I'm gonna put them out there, and somebody can jump in. The first one is: Are there particular things you do in your teaching to try to cultivate joy in your students? So part- particular strategies

Speaker 3 51:44

I mean, I think the biggest thing that I do, again, uh, and Laura hinted at this probably in the first five minutes, is autonomy, the agency to be a learner. I think especially in engineering education, it's so easy to say, "Here's the textbook problem, and here's my problem set, and here's the quiz." But the, the beauty, I teach a mathematical modeling class which requires a lot of this work Find models. Go out there. See where the world can be mathematically converted. See for yourself what phenomenon excites you. Having the agency to explore on your own, uh, I hope, at least, I hope it fosters a, a joy. I hope it fosters a, a wonder for what can be done, and not necessarily giving my own perspective about what it is, but to have students discover that for themselves and to find that, uh, through their own agency. I think that's such an important part in the teaching process, and that it's more transformative than I could ever lecture about.

Speaker 2 52:41

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I totally agree. And I hesitated because it's been a while since I've been teaching as, uh, associate dean and then dean. Um, I, I meet with students all the time, but I, I would say one of the things that creates joy in a classroom is just connection. You know, um, we, we talk... One of our, the first principle is teaching the whole person and which means n- not just making them subject matter ex- experts, but, but helping them build skills and collaboration and communication, critical and creative thinking. Um, helping them think about how they connect to this material in a personal way. Is this who I wanna be? Is this the kind of leader I wanna be? Um, our faculty have taken to just doing stuff. You know, students come in nowadays and they wear these-- I greet them at the door at the start of the semester, and they're all coming in with their earbuds and their, you know, their headphones on, and they sit in the classroom. And they're, you know... And they can walk out of that classroom after a semester with 30 other people and not have met anybody new, right? So we're talking about the fact that, um, okay, none of us got into this to be matchmakers, but we have to create friends in this classroom. Everybody has to meet somebody new on a regular basis because we're also asking them to do things that take a little bit more risk. Sitting passively in a room taking notes, nobody knows if you're paying attention. Nobody knows how well you're doing. You stand up and you share your idea, everybody knows, right? And to create safety, you have to create those environments where people trust each other and like each other. And, and I think when I've, when I've sat in on classes, uh, where-- And, and I do periodically just for various things. They wanna present something or, you know, faculty are showing something. When they are loving each other's success, you know, when they are like, "Yeah!" You know, rooting each other on and just having fun and sharing some inside jokes, you feel the joy in that room.

1 54:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 54:28

You know? So I, I do think fostering connection between our students as well as between faculty and students is a really, um, necessary condition, I think, for joy in the classroom.

1 54:41

Wonderful.

Final Reflections and Farewell

1 54:42

Um, we have a question, right? I would, you know, if you could kind of guess on this one, or maybe you have, already have thoughts. Uh, do either of you think there's a difference between childlike joy and adult joy?

Speaker 2 55:01

Um, okay, I'm no expert, but I will say joy feels childlike. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's this uplist- uplift and aliveness, and it's, you know, the joy of holding your child for the first time. Now, that is an a- adult thing that happens. You know, you don't, that doesn't happen to you as a kid. And yet that wonder, that amazement, that y- y- that is childlike wonder. That is childlike joy. You know? So even the most adult experiences I can think of when I have felt joyful reconnect me to that person I was when the world was entirely new and everything was a new discovery and, you know.

1 55:42

Yeah. It's nice.

Speaker 3 55:44

I think we just deal with that being a, you know, and I guess as adults, we, you know, have a lot more lived experiences, and it causes us to, you know, to sometimes recognize the gravity of what happens, sometimes the seriousness of what goes on, right? Um, and that's something that I think we should definitely highlight the importance of the gravity of what we do. But I don't know if the, the joy, that the joy that we might feel as adults should be that distinct from the first time of discovering something or seeing what's next, right? Or that play element. You know, play is for everybody, you know, in a world where we're trying to cultivate this type of joy. So I think there are some differences, but I think a lot of it's just lived experience and just what we now recognize as we start to understand the world more.

1 56:34

Great. Um, I wanted to give each of you a moment to either share a final thought or something you would suggest we all read. Hmm. Either one

Speaker 2 56:51

Well, I, I guess I would just say, um And I don't want to realize people go through really difficult things in life and have a right to their sorrows and their pains and their loss. But we also need to nourish and nurture our ability to seek joy and, you know, attuning to the good. That might not be possible at some parts in people's lives because of what people ha- go through, you know, and I, and I do wanna honor that, but we need to always try and get back onto that track. Uh, even if it's a small moment, you know, um, the small moments that give us joy, the connection with somebody, the, the accomplishment, the, the beautiful morning with a cup of great coffee, you know- um, that makes you happy to be alive. Um, it is definitely something worth fighting to cultivate in our lives and fighting s- fighting to find space for in our lives, I think.

1 57:54

That's great. Cameron?

Speaker 3 57:57

I think my, my final kind of thought is really just joy is everywhere. You know, it's, it's, it is in that morning cup of coffee. It's in your friend figuring out how to solve that problem. It's in, you know, sometimes even in the most boring of faculty meetings, sometimes, you know, there is- joy in, in thinking about, you know, where do we go from, from here? I think that it's really important to rem- reme- I think that joy is not this frivolous cause. It's not something that's just a, you know, we want people to feel good about themselves. That, that is, again, it's fleeting. Joy is the sustained purpose. It is the sustained value that we derive within ourselves and can foster in others. Joy is not something that is, you know, gone, you know, gone from the world. Uh, but it does require us to find it. It requires us to cycle through these moments of pain and suffering. Uh, and I would also say to not do it alone.

1 59:09

Wonderful. So I just wanna thank you both so very much for joining me, um, in this conversation, but also just for really the extraordinary essays. Um, I, I was moved, I was inspired, I learned so much, and I think it's was just a rare experience of appreciating extraordinary wisdom that you brought to them. So thank you, thank you, thank you. So, um, really appreciate it. Encourage everybody to read the essays. And with that, I just wanna say please join us on April 27th for Rahul Vinukota on Civic Virtue. Thank you, guys, again. This was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 59:53

Thank you so much, Suzanne Thank

Speaker 3 59:54

you