Background

Established in 2019, Anteater Virtues is a research and educational project devoted to bringing the cultivation of intellectual virtues and virtuous intellectual character into the heart of UC Irvine's scholarly culture and curriculum. Focusing on curiosity, intellectual humility, intellectual tenacity, and integrity, the project promotes habits of mind that support respectful and open debate and help students engage with challenging ideas along their educational journey.

UC Irvine's 2024-25 Year of Scholarly Values highlighted the importance of academic excellence and integrity to the university's mission and encouraged campuswide reflection on the values that underpin scholarly inquiry. Through conferences, public debates, workshops, colloquia, podcasts, and other activities, it promoted an intellectual environment in which differing perspectives are respectfully evaluated and scholarly and civic virtues can prosper. 

Established in 2019, the UCI-MUST Project has built a state-of-the-art system for collecting and analyzing data on undergraduate educational experiences. Its work includes measures related to intellectual and civic virtues, civic reasoning capacity, and perspective taking competence. This provides the Center with a distinctive ability to measure student learning and development over time and to use rigorous assessment to continuously improve its programs.