By Mariana Barillas
Founded as one of the nation’s first research universities, Catholic University’s commitment to advancing human knowledge shines through generations of academics across all disciplines. Here, we have a unique way of innovating and discovering — guided by the light of both faith and reason.
The Beauty of Character Formation
This fall, The Catholic University of America launched a $1 million campus-wide initiative to integrate virtue cultivation into the under-graduate experience and to research its impact.
The funding comes from an Institutional Impact grant from the Educating Character Initiative of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University.
“Virtue and character formation are central to … our identity as the nation’s and the bishops’ Catholic university,” said President Kilpatrick. “This grant provides the University with a unique opportunity to more deeply integrate the learning — and living — of virtue across campus, providing all undergraduates knowledge and practices that will benefit them throughout their lives.”
Theologian Gregory LaNave, Ph.D. 2002, leads the implementation of this project across campus and says that the enthusiasm from students and faculty for participating in the project is palpable.
Central to the project are virtue-based exercises incorporated into coursework and surveys to track student experience. The 11 focus virtues are foresight, honesty, hope, humility, magnanimity, teachability, gratitude, friendliness, diligence, understanding/science, and resilience. Sample activities include a business course where students practice resilience by being challenged with an almost impossible task and a nursing course where students find hope by giving hope to patients.
The result, LaNave explained, will be “a catalog of tried and true practices for the cultivation of virtue that will be a permanent possession of this university. That will be a marvelous basis for us to reach out to other organizations — educational or other — and help them accomplish the same.”
The Beauty of Aesthetics
Sociology Professor Brandon Vaidyanathan received a $3.89 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a first-of-its-kind, large-scale international study of beauty.
This “Can Beauty Save the World? Aesthetic Engagement Among the Spiritual But Not Religious” research spans disciplines including literature, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology to better understand how individual and collective experiences of beauty may contribute to creating a sense of transcendent meaning.
“The project will serve as a powerful catalyst to spur scholars, practitioners, and communities to take beauty seriously as a force for good in the world,” said Professor Vaidyanathan. The grant co-leader is an English lecturer and visiting research fellow at Catholic University, novelist and nonfiction author, Tara Isabella Burton. Other project co-investigators include Anjan Chatterjee (University of Pennsylvania); Katie Bank (University of Birmingham); Rebekah Wallace (University of Oxford); and Stephen Bullivant (St. Mary’s University, Twickenham/London).
The Beauty of Our Universe
University researchers are part of an international effort upgrading the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Provost Aaron Dominguez is one of the leads for the next generation of discoveries about the fundamental forces that shape our physical world.
In a lab in Hannan Hall, particle physics engineer Rhea Khatri leads a small team developing an on-campus production line to build silicon-based sensor pixel detector modules. It’s an essential step in the production pipeline entrusted to just a handful of institutions.
“[The modules] are designed to withstand higher radiation, higher luminosity, and higher energy levels for the Phase II upgrade of the Compact Muon Solenoid detector,” said Khatri. All of these factors combined will dramatically increase the discovery power of the LHC.
The devices will tile the interior of the new inner tracker that traces the paths of particles upon collision for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of two general-purpose experiments at the LHC.
The Beauty of Sound
Benjamin T. Rome School of Performing Arts Music Professor Andrew Earle Simpson is one of the nation’s top artists, composers, and performing musicians. And now, his music will bring new life to some of the world’s first movies. Over his career, he has shared this love with 10 students and alumni whose original compositions now accompany historically significant silent films preserved in the Library of Congress. (See note below.)
From a Georges Méliès fantasy to a recording of an early basketball game, each film with each composer’s new music can be viewed on the Library’s website.
“They’re in the library’s catalog; they’re listed now as collaborators in the library system,” said Simpson. “I don’t know if that’s immortality, but it’s pretty close! They’re now part of our cultural memory.”
The scores were performed live to screen at the National Gallery of Art and on campus by the DC-based contemporary classical ensemble Balance Campaign. The recordings were synchronized to silent films from the Library of Congress’ Paper Print Collection, which holds the only records of many innovative works that continue to inspire filmmakers today.
In the early days of motion pictures, a theater would hire musicians to perform at a film screening. Very few had original music, and even fewer have survived — lost to history like most of the early creative outputs of the emerging film industry.
Despite the absence of technology to synchronize sound, “the language of film was invented in those early decades,” said Simpson. He explained that artists worked within the limits of the medium to convey meaning with “gesture, rhythm, and facial expression” that composers like himself can amplify into experiences that remain distinct from those in modern movies.
As a composer, musician, and conductor, Simpson’s silent film scores have been featured on Turner Classic Movies and in more than 50 DVD and Blu-ray releases, and he performs live around the world. He recently appeared as a guest artist at the inaugural Los Angeles Silent Film Festival, where he debuted his original score for the 1925 classic, The Big Parade, in honor of the film’s 100th anniversary.
“A silent film with live music can be a magical experience,” said Simpson. That’s movie magic, indeed.
Note: The composers, all of whom have studied music composition with Professor Simpson at the University, are Kris Amundson, M.M. 2023; Matthew Brown, M.M. 2023; Michael DeMarco, M.M. 2024; Aidan Feeney, a music composition senior; Sarah Norcross Hough (completed one year of master’s study at Catholic University); James Krom, M.M. 2024; composition doctoral student Christian Lyons; Elizabeth Rexine, B.A. 2025, and current composition graduate student; Michael Roll, M.M. 2023; and Mary Russman, B.M. 2024.
