The Educating Character Initiative announced a request for proposals from U.S. colleges and universities for grants between $50,000 and $1,000,000 to develop the character of their faculty, staff, and students.
In socially diverse contexts, character educators often struggle to articulate what “good character” means. They want to avoid both moral dogmatism and relativism. In this webinar, three distinguished presenters draw on Anishinaabe principles of relationality, process, and reciprocity to offer a third way, showing character educators how they can help students develop a contextualized understanding of good character.
Philosophy graduates consistently score higher on tests of verbal and logical reasoning than their peers from other majors, according to the new research by members of the ECI Community.
Once a federal Indian boarding school, Fort Lewis College is using its ECI Institutional Impact Grant to address its painful past by “centering character education within a reconciliation initiative that goes beyond atonement to institutional change,” writes LearningWell Magazine.
In the August installment of our media partnership with LearningWell Magazine, a publication of the LearningWell Coalition, Syracuse University’s “Character Development and Sport Fan Engagement” project is highlighted for differentiating itself from most sports-driven character-building projects by focusing on the fans.
In July, 52 faculty members from Wake Forest and beyond joined us for our “Character Across the Curriculum” workshop. The goal was to support educators who want to integrate leadership and character development into new and existing courses.
The funding comes from a new $12.4 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. which will also support coaching, resources, and workshops for faculty across the country.
In an opinion essay for Inside Higher Education, Senior Lecturer of Marine Conservation and Ethics at Duke University Rebecca Vidra—a 2025 ECI Teacher-Scholar Grant recipient—reflects on her work to redesign courses on environmental issues in ways that center the formation of intellectual virtues like curiosity, humility, and resilience.
Thanks to the support of Lilly Endowment Inc. and Wake Forest University, the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) has awarded $15.6 million in new Institutional Impact Grants to 28 projects among 33 colleges and universities. Each of these institutions seeks to undertake a substantial and sustained effort to educate character in undergraduate populations across their institutions.
These three-year grants provide support to enable institutional leaders, faculty, and staff to infuse character in undergraduate curricula and programming in ways that align organically with their college or university’s mission, context, and culture.
Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative (ECI) will expand its support for character education at colleges and universities across the country with more than $30 million in new funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.
The Anteater Virtues program at the University of California-Irvine focuses on the development of four key intellectual virtues: curiosity, integrity, intellectual humility, and intellectual tenacity. One of the project’s distinctive features is the support it receives from senior academic leadership.
We were privileged to speak with several of the principal investigators of 2024 grants while they attended the Program for Leadership and Character’s spring visit and ask, “What is most exciting about what you are learning from their grant projects?”
The Educating Character Initiative announced a request for proposals from U.S. colleges and universities for grants between $50,000 and $1,000,000 to develop the character of their faculty, staff, and students.
In socially diverse contexts, character educators often struggle to articulate what “good character” means. They want to avoid both moral dogmatism and relativism. In this webinar, three distinguished presenters draw on Anishinaabe principles of relationality, process, and reciprocity to offer a third way, showing character educators how they can help students develop a contextualized understanding of good character.
Philosophy graduates consistently score higher on tests of verbal and logical reasoning than their peers from other majors, according to the new research by members of the ECI Community.
Once a federal Indian boarding school, Fort Lewis College is using its ECI Institutional Impact Grant to address its painful past by “centering character education within a reconciliation initiative that goes beyond atonement to institutional change,” writes LearningWell Magazine.
In the August installment of our media partnership with LearningWell Magazine, a publication of the LearningWell Coalition, Syracuse University’s “Character Development and Sport Fan Engagement” project is highlighted for differentiating itself from most sports-driven character-building projects by focusing on the fans.
In July, 52 faculty members from Wake Forest and beyond joined us for our “Character Across the Curriculum” workshop. The goal was to support educators who want to integrate leadership and character development into new and existing courses.
The funding comes from a new $12.4 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. which will also support coaching, resources, and workshops for faculty across the country.
In an opinion essay for Inside Higher Education, Senior Lecturer of Marine Conservation and Ethics at Duke University Rebecca Vidra—a 2025 ECI Teacher-Scholar Grant recipient—reflects on her work to redesign courses on environmental issues in ways that center the formation of intellectual virtues like curiosity, humility, and resilience.
Thanks to the support of Lilly Endowment Inc. and Wake Forest University, the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) has awarded $15.6 million in new Institutional Impact Grants to 28 projects among 33 colleges and universities. Each of these institutions seeks to undertake a substantial and sustained effort to educate character in undergraduate populations across their institutions.
These three-year grants provide support to enable institutional leaders, faculty, and staff to infuse character in undergraduate curricula and programming in ways that align organically with their college or university’s mission, context, and culture.
Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative (ECI) will expand its support for character education at colleges and universities across the country with more than $30 million in new funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.
The first in a series of stories by LearningWell on the Educating Character Initiative and the efforts of our member institutions.
The Anteater Virtues program at the University of California-Irvine focuses on the development of four key intellectual virtues: curiosity, integrity, intellectual humility, and intellectual tenacity. One of the project’s distinctive features is the support it receives from senior academic leadership.
We’ve compiled a short list of recommended newsletters focused on character and character formation.
We were privileged to speak with several of the principal investigators of 2024 grants while they attended the Program for Leadership and Character’s spring visit and ask, “What is most exciting about what you are learning from their grant projects?”