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What’s New

Sunlight on the WFU campus

Educating Character Initiative announces $15.6M in new grants to 33 institutions

These three-year grants of up to $1 million will provide support to enable institutional leaders, faculty, and staff to infuse character in undergraduate curricula and programming in ways that align organically with their mission, context, and culture.

  • Our Educating Character Initiative (ECI) is expanding its support for character education at colleges and universities across the United States with more than $30 million in new funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. This new grant will enable the ECI to continue to build upon the work of colleges and universities that are striving to expand the role of character education at their own institutions.
  • 🎓 Our Class of 2025 Leadership and Character Scholars shared their thoughts on leading with character and experiences that shaped them during their time in the Program. You can read more here.
  • 📚 If you are still looking to fill out your schedule for next semester, here’s a few course offerings being led by instructors associated with the Program for Leadership and Character.
Program for Leadership and Character logo

Our Vision

To inspire, educate, and empower leaders of character at Wake Forest and at colleges and universities across the world.

Our Mission

To use innovative teaching, creative programming, and cutting-edge research to help transform the lives of students, foster an inclusive culture of leadership and character on college campuses, and catalyze a broader public conversation that places character at the center of leadership.

Get Involved

Here’s how you can become directly involved with our Program as a Wake Forest student, or as a faculty or staff member at Wake Forest and other institutions across the country:


Receive regular updates on events and happenings:

“An education that shapes the whole person is both necessary and desired in our world. The Program is vital to our ability to meet this moment and produce leaders for a better future.”

Wake Forest President Susan R. Wente
Michael Lamb giving a presentation.

Scholars Initiation Ceremony in 2023

discussion group meeting with students

Educating Character Initiative

Learn more about grants, resources, conferences, and learning opportunities provided and curated by our ECI Scholars and staff to educate character within higher education.

Educating Character Initiative

Professional Schools

See our approach and impact in law, medicine, and engineering at Wake Forest and beyond.

Professional Schools

Resources

The Program for Leadership and Character is built upon the research and scholarly work of faculty at Wake Forest and beyond. Here’s a short list of resources from faculty and staff in our Program that you may find useful as you seek to educate character in your own context.

Resources

Stories From Our Program

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