What’s New
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.
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
Who We Are
The Program for Leadership and Character consists of faculty and staff from a diverse group of disciplines and backgrounds who study and assess leadership and character, as well as students who take on the important and challenging work of developing their leadership and character. Our Educating Character Initiative (ECI) is creating a community of educators interested in character on campuses across the country and world.
What We Do
We help faculty at Wake Forest and beyond educate leadership and character in the classroom and across their campuses. We work directly with students through our Scholars and Ambassadors programs, as well as through courses, fellowships, discussion groups, retreats, and special events. We spark public conversations and collaborate with others across the world. And we strive to educate leadership and character in ways that reflect Wake Forest’s motto, Pro Humanitate.
How We Do It
We put character at the center of leadership and ground our Program’s initiatives in seven research-based strategies for developing character. Because character education is not a one-size-fits-all approach, we find value and strength in engaging diverse ideas and partners. And we rigorously assess outcomes to learn what works and how we can improve.
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.
Professional Schools
See our approach and impact in law, medicine, and engineering at Wake Forest and beyond.
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.
