The Educating Character Initiative, a project of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, was founded in 2023 through the generous support of Lilly Endowment Inc.
What’s New at the ECI
- 📣The Educating Character Initiative is excited to launch a renewed Invitation to Community and 2025 Request for Proposals inviting U.S. colleges & universities to apply for grants.
- ❓Interested in applying for a 2025 Educating Character Initiative Grant? Learn about each grant type and ask questions at our online Grant Information Q&A Sessions with the ECI Team.
- We are excited to announce our ECI Advisory Board members.
- We are excited that so many of you attended our major conference, Educating Character Across Differences: Cultivating Communities of Character in the University, December 5-7, 2024, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. Learn more about our featured speakers here.
Our Goal
The Educating Character Initiative aims to equip a wide range of public and private institutions of higher education—including, but not limited to, major research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, military academies, minority-serving institutions, religiously affiliated colleges, and single-gender colleges—with the resources, funding, and support needed to integrate character education into their distinctive institutional contexts, curricula, and
cultures. The broader aspiration is to foster a robust network that recognizes the value of educating character within higher education.
Since our launch, we have welcomed over 1,200 faculty, staff, and administrators from more than 500 institutions and organizations to join a broad and diverse community with a common purpose: educating and building communities of character in higher education and beyond. If you’re a faculty or staff member working in higher education and interested in joining our community, tap or click on the button below:
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Building Capacity to Cultivate Character
In addition to organizing workshops, conferences, and convenings and developing resources for faculty and staff, the Educating Character Initiative awards grants to both individuals and institutions. In the 2024 grant cycle, ECI awarded over $17.8 M to individuals and institutions engaged in efforts to strengthen the understanding, integration, and education of character at
U.S. colleges and universities.
In 2025, funding for institutions will include Institutional Impact Grants of between $100,000 and $1,000,000 as well as Capacity-Building Grants of up to $50,000. Successful grantees will be teams of faculty, staff, and administrators at U.S. colleges and universities with outstanding proposals for developing the moral, civic, and/or intellectual character and capacity of faculty, staff, and students. Funding for individuals is available through Teacher-Scholar Grants of up to $15,000, which may be used to support research on character or character
education in undergraduates or to develop resources that strengthen the capacity to educate character at the grantee’s institution or in the larger network.
Support
The Program for Leadership and Character is delighted to have the opportunity to expand its impact through the Educating Character Initiative. We are deeply grateful to Lilly Endowment Inc. for its commitment to this vision, as well as to Wake Forest University for its unwavering support of the Program.