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By Dr. Qin Zhu In recent years, educators and researchers have increasingly recognized that technical expertise alone is not enough to prepare future scientists and engineers for the complex moral and social challenges of their professions. As concerns about well-being and ethical responsibility take on greater importance in STEM, particularly with the emergence of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, there is a growing need to embrace compassion as a guiding principle in how we teach and learn. Many students struggle with stress, isolation, and a sense of disconnection in highly competitive academic environments, while faculty often face increasing pressures to balance research productivity, teaching demands, and student support. Compassion helps build inclusive classroom environments, supports student belonging, and nurtures a reflective, human-centered mindset critical for responsible innovation and professional growth.  To advance this vision, we are thrilled to introduce you to the Compassionate STEM Education Project, a three-year collaborative initiative funded by the Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative, with support from the Lilly Endowment. The project aims to cultivate a culture of compassion in STEM education by building a community of faculty committed to integrating compassion into undergraduate teaching through engaged and reflective pedagogies. This project is grafted upon the Teaching with Heart Project. In partnership with the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), we will extend this work across institutions, cultivating interconnected communities of educators who are reimagining the role of compassion in shaping both classroom culture and student character. Together, we hope to help shape a new paradigm of STEM education that blends technical excellence with empathy, care, and ethical responsibility. To establish a dedicated community of faculty committed to systematically creating a compassionate learning environment and integrating compassion into undergraduate STEM curricula through engaged pedagogical approaches, this project aims to achieve the following four goals: Goal #1: Support STEM faculty in enhancing and extending their compassion toward their students. Goal #2: Collaborate with STEM faculty to develop strategies that further enrich the compassionate learning environment in their classrooms. Goal #3: Assist STEM faculty in integrating compassion into their STEM curricula. Goal #4: Enhance the cultivation of compassionate tendencies among STEM students through their research and design projects. Through this project, we invite STEM educators to join us in reimagining what it means to teach with both rigor and care. By embedding compassion into the heart of STEM education, we can cultivate learning environments that empower not only capable engineers and scientists but also empathetic, responsible, and reflective human beings. Comments are closed.
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