History of Life Worth Living

Observing trends in undergraduate education and the wider culture, Miroslav Volf sees the need for humanities courses that bring together first-person engagement, commitment to truth-seeking pluralism, and deep reflection on the shape of the good life. He and Ryan McAnnally-Linz design the first iteration of Humanities 411.

Miroslav and Ryan teach the first LWL seminar of 14 Yale undergraduates. At the end of the course, students insist that it should be taught every year. Matt Croasmun agrees to teach a second iteration of the course in 2015.

Colleagues around the world begin adapting to LWL to their contexts. They include Casey Strine at the University of Sheffield, where he now co-directs a LWL hub with Josh Forstenzer. At Yale, Matt and Ryan teach Humanities 065, Education and the Life Worth Living, for the first time. Catlin Gabel School in Portland, OR, pilots a Life Worth Living course for high school seniors.

To meet growing student demand, the Yale LWL teaching team welcomes Yale Center for Faith & Culture scholars Angela Gorrell and Drew Collins. The first LWL courses are taught at the University of South Florida, West Chester University and the University of Hong Kong. Cumulative enrollment in LWL university courses passes 600 students.

Matt develops a six-week LWL course for life-long learners and teaches it through the Yale Alumni College and Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, CT.

The first graduate student fellows teach their own Life Worth Living seminars at Yale. Since 2019, more than twenty Yale graduate students have taught Life Worth Living.

Matt and Angela adapt the six-week community course and teach it at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution.

Secondary school and undergraduate educators from dozens of institutions gather to develop principles and practices for LWL-style teaching at a “Pedagogy of the Good Life” workshop organized by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and hosted by the Pepperdine University Center for Faith & Learning.

Solomon Schechter Day School in West Hartford, CT, St. Luke’s School in New Canaan, CT, and the McCallie School in Chattanooga, TN, launch their Life Worth Living courses. Matt organizes the first in a series of LWL workshops for secondary school educators at Grace Farms in New Canaan, CT in partnership with the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools.

With support from the John Templeton Foundation, network members and advisors form a Life Worth Living project team to plan the next phase of growth for LWL in undergraduate education.

Cumulative enrollment in LWL undergraduate courses passes 5,000 students worldwide.

Co-authors Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz publish Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most with Penguin's Open Field imprint. It makes the NYT bestseller list, Miroslav discusses the book on the Today Show and at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and Kelly Corrigan Wonders features a four-episode “book club” with Claire Danes and Kate Bowler.

The first group of LWL faculty and graduate fellows gather in at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik for an intensive teaching workshop as they prepare to develop their own LWL-style courses. Their courses will be taught for the first time between fall 2023 and spring 2025.

Supported by an Erasmus+ grant, LWL team members Andrea Kasper, Angela Gorrell, and Josh Forstenzer develop a short-form LWL experience to support educational administrators in the European Union.

Twenty-two faculty and ten graduate students are awarded fellowships and join the LWL network. They gather for an intensive workshop at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.