The College Fix

University just awarded dozens of grants to help other campuses create programs on ‘virtues,’ ‘habits of success’  

Wake Forest University has rolled out a new program that just gave $15.6 million in grants to 29 universities to “integrate character education” into students’ learning experiences.

The goal of the Educating Character Initiative is to provide public and private, secular and religious higher education institutions with the resources “to integrate character education” into their classes and campus cultures, according to a news release from the private North Carolina university.

The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. is one of the recipients. Spokesperson Nicole Germain told The College Fix in a recent email the university wants to help students develop successful habits and virtues to guide them through life.

“Universities have been focused for decades on knowledge dissemination. But that’s not why you go to college. You hold all the knowledge you could ever want in your hand, in your mobile phone,” she told The Fix.

“The real reason you go to college is because you want to prepare to be a success in life. And success is not primarily about knowledge, it’s about acquiring the right habits, habits of success,” Germain said.

“I think the impact of this grant will be huge, because it will allow us to take this experimental work and extend it across our entire undergraduate population,” Germain told The Fix.

Over the next three years, the university plans to use the $1 million grant on programs that “cultivate virtue for all of the University’s 3,100 undergraduate students,” according to a news release.

This includes incorporating “virtue formation into existing courses” and creating “an online catalog of resources for faculty and staff” not only at its own university but also other schools, the release states.

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Hope College in Michigan also received a $700,000 grant to integrate the virtues of gratitude and generosity in its courses and research projects, according to a news release.

Daryl Van Tongeren, professor of psychology and director of the Frost Center for Social Science Research, told The Fix in a recent email the Wake Forest initiative “aligns well” with his college’s mission.

The private Christian school focuses on developing “character,” “leadership and service in a global society through academic and co-curricular programs of recognized excellence in the liberal arts and in the context of the historic Christian faith,” he said.

The new grant will be used for research on gratitude and generosity; “for exploring ways to infuse the virtues into co-curricular programming; and for developing a ‘character hub’ that will continue to make resources available and help connect faculty and staff engaged in virtue- and character-development efforts,” the release states.

Van Tongeren said Wake Forest and the Lilly Endowment, which is funding the grants in partnership with the university, “have a strong reputation for carrying out high-impact projects leading to significant outcomes that help transform universities and communities.”

“They are building a community of learners and leaders as part of this larger initiative, through hosting workshops and conferences. Universities have long endeavored to not only educate the mind but also aid in the full development of their students,” he told The Fix.

Wake Forest offered the grants through its Program for Leadership and Character, which works to foster “broader public conversations” about putting character at “the center of leadership.”

For the past 10 years, its faculty have been conducting research and creating programs that teach “students to be not just effective leaders, but also ethical leaders whose values, virtues, and vision orient them toward the common good,” according to the program website.

The character development program also hosts events for faculty and staff on leadership and character, including a December conference, “Educating Character Differences: Cultivating Communities of Character in the University.”

The university’s media relations did not respond to two requests for comment from The Fix via email in recent weeks.

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IMAGE: Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University/Facebook

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