University of South Carolina PhD candidate Dan Castell has become one of a dozen USC grad students to receive a Graduate Civic Scholars Grant. The grant involves a 50-hour interdisciplinary program that allows enrolled USC graduate students to build opportunities outside the walls of the institution for teaching, research, and creative work relevant to their career development.

Mr. Castell sees the grant as groundwork for a larger Wisdom Project. He points to Thomas Kiefer’s assertion in “Collective Wisdom and Civilization” [Comparative Civilization Review 72 (2015)] that wisdom is the one essential by which our civilization can find its way to a successful, cooperative social architecture, but for it to have that role it must be widely and effectively inculcated. Mr. Castell aims to draw scholars, teachers, and students to the pursuit of wisdom—both academic and historical, interdisciplinary and intercultural, and believes the grant will support significant steps in that direction.