Communities of Impact Initiative

This new initiative is part of a shift within the ECI from a project for the community to a community-driven initiative — a shift that inspires new directions and energy in the character movement in higher education. By empowering multi-institutional teams of scholars and practitioners within and beyond higher education institutions to address timely and important questions, problems, or challenges in the domain of character, we seek to catalyze a character-centered transformation of the higher education sector.

Our hybrid approach integrates communities-of-practice-style of work with lessons drawn from collective impact models. Communities of Impact (or CoIs) operate within a third space — a commons, between and beyond individual institutions. By focusing on the sector of higher education itself, CoIs offer new, creative opportunities, especially new collaborations that transcend the particularity of specific institutions. Their work will generate new insights that are immediately applicable to these institutions, and provide readily-available resources posted on our new platform that can be adapted within new contexts. Through their participation in the CoIs, individual educators develop expertise and insights that they can bring back to their own institutional cultures, ultimately leading to a collective contagion of culture change through the work of individuals and communities in distinct institutional contexts.

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The Backbone of this Initiative

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