Planning to Scale the "Life Worth Living" Approach

What sort of life is worthy of our humanity? This question is fundamental to human life and, therefore, fundamental to education. Yet for many reasons, this question is difficult to take up in contemporary undergraduate education. The Yale Center for Faith & Culture Life Worth Living (LWL) program equips students, educators, and the public for the lifelong process of discerning, articulating, and pursuing the good life through engaging the world’s great philosophical and religious traditions. The program envisions a world where deep reflection on the good life is central to pluralistic undergraduate education and public discourse. This project proposes to evaluate the viability and value of scaling the LWL approach to reach more students at pluralistic undergraduate institutions. Through market research, convening existing LWL partners, and network building activities, this project will produce a report that captures a new understanding of what analogous courses are already being offered, what obstacles to interest and execution exist, and what strategies are likely to be effective in overcoming these obstacles. If scaling proves to be both viable and valuable, we hope this project will generate a larger implementation project to bring the LWL approach to more students on more campuses.