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Funding for Wake Forest Faculty and Staff

Groups talking at a workshop

The Program for Leadership and Character offers four sources of funding for faculty and/or staff efforts to support Wake Forest students’ development as leaders of character. These programs include: 1) Departmental Grants; 2) Course Development and Redesign Grants; 3) Travel for Interdisciplinary and Community Engaged Learning (TICEL) Grants; 4) Co-Sponsorships; (5) Character Integration Grants for Leadership and Character in the Law.

Departmental Grants
Course Development & Redesign Workshop Stipends
TICEL Grants
Co-Sponsorships

Departmental Grants

Departmental Grants support faculty and staff in advancing high-impact, character-centered initiatives. Funds should be used to support intentional, applied character education efforts to provide leadership and character development opportunities to students and/or develop their own expertise as character and leadership educators.  These efforts should align with the L&C Certificate Program’s focus on virtue development, practical wisdom, dialogue across difference, and character-centered leadership.

Major gifts from the Lilly Endowment fund this program

Who may apply: Priority will be given to faculty and staff who have completed, are enrolled in, are registered for the next session of the Leadership & Character (L&C) Certificate Program or the Leadership & Character Course Development Workshop (CDW). These grants are intended to help certificate and CDW alumni translate their learning into student-facing programs, curricular or co-curricular initiatives, and faculty/staff development efforts that reflect the principles, frameworks, and practices emphasized in the L&C Certificate Program.

Grant amount: up to $3,000 per year

Example uses of funds:

Key Dates

Grant Requirements:

Grant Recipient Cohort Experience

For more information:

UNDERGRADUATE FACULTY AND STAFF should contact Kathleen Stimely (mckeekl@wfu.edu) Senior Director, Program Administration for the Program for Leadership and Character.

GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL FACULTY AND STAFF should contact Lauren Iley-Spear (ileyspl@wfu.edu), Director of Program Operations in the Professional Schools.

LAW SCHOOL FACULTY AND STAFF should contact Nancy Winfrey (winfren@wfu.edu) Assistant Director of Curriculum and Pedagogical Design, Program for Leadership and Character in the Professional Schools.

Apply

Course Development and Redesign Workshop Stipends

Course Development and Redesign stipends compensate faculty for dedicating significant time, attention, and intellectual labor during their summer months to 1) deepen their expertise in character-development pedagogy and 2) thoughtfully develop a new course or revise an existing course to better support students’ growth as people of character. These stipends recognize the substantial time faculty invest in learning, reflection, course planning, and collaboration.

Participants will attend a 3-day in-person summer workshop hosted by the Program for Leadership and Character in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching. In the weeks following the workshop, participants will continue to invest time in shaping their learning outcomes, assessments, and activities, as well as exchanging peer feedback and strengthening their course design through reflection and revision. Participants may also opt into an academic-year Community of Impact, which supports continued growth and shared learning across four meetings throughout the year. Applications are encouraged from faculty across all disciplines, professions, traditions, and perspectives. Applicants who participated last year may apply again, though priority will be given to first-time applicants. Major gifts from Lilly Endowment Inc. and the Kern Family Foundation fund this program.

The 2026 Course Development Workshop will be held in person at the Kimpton Cardinal Hotel, July 13-15, 2026.

Stipends

Participants will receive a Course Development and Redesign stipend of $4,000.

Who may apply:

Any WFU faculty.

Requirements to participate in the Course Development Workshop

For questions about the event or application process, please contact Kathleen Stimely (mckeekl@wfu.edu) and Liz Whiting (piercee@wfu.edu).

Apply

Travel for Interdisciplinary and/or Community Engaged Learning (TICEL) Grant

The Program for Leadership and Character welcomes requests for funding from any graduate or professional school faculty person whose courses 1) involve travel and 2) help students develop the virtues and competencies needed to solve complex social problems. 

The overarching goal of the Travel for Interdisciplinary and Community Engaged Learning (TICEL) Grant is to educate professionals who recognize complex social problems in their communities, feel motivated to address those problems, and possess the professional competencies and personal virtues to address them. 

Hands-on, experiential learning activities beyond the classroom setting can support students’ development as leaders with the needed collaborative problem-solving capacities. However, these learning experiences can be expensive, involving costs for transportation, lodging, food, etc. The TICEL grant exists to offset the cost of these learning activities for WFU professional and graduate students. Faculty apply for funds to cover expenses resulting from students’ travel (including the faculty person’s own travel expenses). These funds can be utilized by your department to pay students in the form of stipends or can be used to pay directly for the costs of learning activity.

Key Grant Dates

Selection Criteria

In order to perceive priority consideration, applications should meet the following criteria (the Program for Leadership and Character will entertain applications that contain only some of the criteria below):

1. Virtue Development Learning Outcome, Activities, and Assessment

The activities supported through the funds enable students’ growth as leaders of character. The course has at least one virtue learning outcome with two or more aligned learning activities and at least one assessment for gauging students’ growth toward the learning outcome. 

2. Engagement with the Program’s Key Pedagogical Concepts and Practices 

The proposal reflects engagement with key pedagogical concepts and practices of the Program for Leadership and Character. See “Resources” folder.

3. Interdisciplinary and/or Interprofessional Engagement

3. Interdisciplinary and/or Interprofessional Engagement

The funds support learning activities that enable professional school students to learn with and from students and professionals outside of their home school (law, business, divinity, medicine, etc.). Especially welcome are courses that are cross-listed or fulfill a requirement outside of the instructor’s home discipline.

AND/OR

4. Community Engagement

The funds support learning activities that enable students to engage communities outside of their profession’s normal institutional settings. In this context, “community” refers to a group of people connected by a shared concern or identity (a shared language community, a neighborhood community, etc.).

5. Regional Connection

While proposals that would support national and international travel will certainly be considered, proposals which enable travel in the Southeast United States are particularly welcome, as these projects may be more easily repeated.

6. Accessibility

The funds significantly increase students’ economic ability to participate in the learning activities. They defer a high percentage of the costs students would otherwise bear to participate in the course’s activities.

7. Efficiency 

Funding requests show a concern for fiscal responsibility and cost minimization.

Responsibilities of Grant Awardees

  1. Read 1-2 articles or chapters in the “TICEL Resources”
  2. Submit application by clicking or tapping on the button below and filling out the form.
  3. Submit post-travel report including the following materials: cost sheet outlining how funds were spent; short descriptions of learning activities; short description of assessment tool; documentation of assessment tool (rubric, pre- and post-survey, etc.); and a short reflection on what the applicant learned about character education from implementing TICEL activities.
Apply

Co-Sponsorships

A limited amount of co-sponsorship funds are available for creative faculty and staff in campus departments to provide leadership and character opportunities through conferences, speaker series, and other events. Major gifts from Lilly Endowment Inc. and the Kern Family Foundation fund this program and are limited by grant terms and stipulations.  

Grant amount: up to $500

Key Dates: Requests reviewed at the first of every month

Please apply 30 to 60 days before your event for best consideration. 

UNDERGRADUATE FACULTY AND STAFF should contact Kathleen Stimely (mckeekl@wfu.edu) Senior Director, Program Administration for the Program for Leadership and Character.

GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL FACULTY AND STAFF should contact Lauren Iley-Spear (ileyspl@wfu.edu), Director of Program Operations in the Professional Schools.