At the close of our first year of the Educating Character Initiative, we are filled with gratitude for the exceptional creativity, effort, humility, and friendship visible in this emerging community of character.
We hope you will consider joining the growing Educating Character Initiative community of leaders from over 500 institutions and organizations. By creating and sustaining a broad-based network of individuals and institutions that serve faculty, staff, and students from different backgrounds, traditions, and disciplines, we seek to encourage diverse perspectives on character in higher education and support opportunities to learn from each other, experiment with new ideas and pedagogies, and benefit from the individual and collective wisdom of our community. We invite participation from individuals and teams from all two- and four-year colleges and universities—both public and private, secular and religious—including but not limited to research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, military academies, minority-serving institutions, and single-gender colleges.
Whether you are just beginning to explore an interest in educating character or have been teaching, researching, or educating character for years, we invite you to join us in one or more of the following ways:
- Register as a member of the Educating Character Initiative community. We are an international network and a collaborative community of practice where we learn from and with each other, so we hope you will join not only for what you might gain, but also for what you might offer. Registration is free and will give you access to events, opportunities for conversation and learning, and resources for educating character.
- Participate in workshops, webinars, and convenings hosted by the Educating Character Initiative, such as our faculty workshop on how to integrate character into courses; our monthly webinar focused upon equipping faculty, staff, and administrators to educate character character across differences, assess and measure character education efforts, and design character-infused curricular and co-curricular programming; our ECI Book Club that meets regularly to discuss character-related books; and site visits to Wake Forest where ECI community members can learn about the approach to cultivating character developed by the Program for Leadership and Character.
- Attend and/or present at the bi-annual major conference of the Program for Leadership and Character. In December 2024, more than one hundred speakers presented on the theme of Educating Character Across Differences: Cultivating Communities of Character in the University. Please stay tuned for an announcement of dates for the 2026 conference.
- Contribute to research and resources focused on educating character.
- Apply for funding to support your own research, programming, and/or professional development through one of four types of Educating Character Initiative grants.
In addition to these opportunities, grant recipients and network participants will be supported by the Educating Character Initiative team and each other as we seek to understand, implement, and expand character education and support a wider network of both individuals and institutions focused on educating character in their distinctive contexts.