Cultivating Purpose

Anna Moreland, Chair and Director of the Villanova University Honors Program, and Thomas W. Smith, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at The Catholic University of America, will discuss their recent book, The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like It Matters and their work in education for flourishing among undergraduates.

Experience the Event

Presented by

Monday, January 27, 2025 12:00 pm

This event was recorded on January 27, 2025. Learn more at the Virtues & Vocations website.

Dr. Anna Bonta Moreland is the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and Director of the University Honors Program at Villanova University. A full professor in the Department of Humanities, her academic expertise and research include medieval theology, interfaith dialogue, and comparative theology. She is co-author of The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters (CUA Press, 2024), Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), and author of Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God (Crossroad/Herder, 2010). She is recipient of a “Hope in Higher Education” Templeton Foundation three-year grant, and “Augustinian Leadership and Character Education Beyond the First-Year Experience” Educating Character Initiative Grant.

Meet the Speaker: Thomas W. Smith

Thomas W. Smith is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences as well as an Ordinary Professor in the Department of Politics. Winner of several departmental and university-wide teaching awards, he has published in some of the leading journals in the nation, including The American Political Science Review, The Review of Politics, Polis, The Journal of Politics, and Polity. He is the author of Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle’s Dialectical Pedagogy (SUNY Press) and is currently working on a book entitled, Faith in Politics. He and his wife have three children and live in Chevy Chase, MD.

The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like It Matters

From the Publisher: The Young Adult Playbook goes where other life design books refuse to go: it asks deep questions about what constitutes a happy life. After decades of listening to their students, Anna Moreland and Thomas Smith name the underlying desires in young adults: while searching for a lucrative career, they long for meaningful work; their social media and gaming practices point to a deeper yearning for intimacy; and their leisure habits have been crushed under the productivity machine. This book helps them unlock their deepest desires. It offers practical strategies to improve habits. And it leads them to recover activities lost from childhood. The book is threaded with the real voices of young adults who have found their way out of this rough terrain. These offer much needed models of hope, providing a concrete map through unprecedented challenges. Journal exercises throughout the chapters tailor the strategies for each individual reader.

Plenty of books diagnose the ills of this digital age. Few offer a pathway out of these challenges. As caring and effective college professors, Moreland and Smith have spent decades rescuing students from this impoverished landscape. In this book they attempt to reach the students they can’t teach.

For more information, visit the publisher’s website.

Getting Serious about Work, Play, and Leisure Fall Humanities Lecture 2024 with Anna Moreland and Tom Smith

In this lecture, Dr. Anna Moreland and Dr. Thomas W. Smith discuss their recently published The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters (CUA Press, 2024). Moreland and Smith discuss the ways young people feel trapped in work, in play, and in leisure. They diagnose the problems of the contemporary collegiate landscape and offer concrete pathways through this challenging terrain.

To view the lecture, please click here.

Theology Professor Empowers Students to Navigate Life’s Big Questions in New Book

To read the article from Villanova University about The Young Adult Playbook, please click here.

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