Wake Forest To Expand Character Education With $30 Million Lilly Grant

Forbes

12-07-2025

Wake Forest University will expand its character education initiative, thanks to a new $30 million ... More grant from Lilly Endowment.
Wake Forest University has received more than $30 million in new funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. for its Educating Character Initiative.
As a result of that grant, Wake Forest will expand its support for a nationwide network of colleges and universities to develop and offer programming focused on the study and education of character for undergraduate students.
"This extraordinary vote of confidence provides support for the Educating Character Initiative through the end of the decade and affirms Wake Forest's leadership at the forefront of this critical movement,' said Wake Forest University President Susan R. Wente, in the announcement.
The idea for the ECI dates to 2016 when then Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch launched an effort to encourage faculty, staff, and students to integrate character education into their courses and departments.
Over the ensuring years, Wake Forest's Program for Leadership and Character, of which the ECI is a part, has received financial support from the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Kern Family Foundation.
But the largest benefactor has been the Lilly Endowment, which provided a three-year $3.4 million grant in 2019 that funded Wake Forest faculty who wanted to integrate leadership and character into their courses and supported additional student programming, departmental initiatives, scholarly research, and regular conferences.
In 2023, the Lilly Endowment awarded Wake Forest a five-year $30.7 million grant to sustain the university's emphasis on the study of character and also create a national higher education network focused on educating character. The university used $23 million from that grant to enhance and expand character education at other colleges and universities.
'We believe focusing on character can help many colleges and universities realize their aspirations to educate the whole person and generate the knowledge, capacity and character that our students will need to live and lead well in the 21st century,' said Michael Lamb, executive director of Wake Forest's Program for Leadership and Character, at the time.
Across the past two years, the ECI has awarded grants of various sizes to 146 institutions. Its goal is for its grant-funded institutions to reach 600,000 individuals by the end of 2029.
Lilly's latest gift, announced this week will be split into two portions. The first $10 million will help fund a new round of Institutional Impact grants this year at other institutions. The second part will provide $20 million to fund another full round of ECI grants in 2026.
On Friday, Wake Forest announced that it had awarded $15.6 million in Institutional Impact Grants to 28 projects at 33 colleges and universities. The three-year grants range from $100,000 to $1 million, providing support for institutions to 'infuse character in undergraduate curricula and programming in ways that align organically with their mission, context, and culture.'
The recipients include two community colleges, seven minority-serving institutions, 10 public institutions, 19 private institutions of which 12 are religiously affiliated, and two women-serving institutions. One award was given to a collaborative between six institutions — California State University, Bakersfield; Harvard University; DePauw University; Santa Fe College; Stanford University; and St. Philip's College.
'We were especially impressed by the exceptional quantity and quality of this year's submissions. We are grateful for the expanded support from Lilly Endowment, which made it possible to provide awards to even more institutions," said Jennifer Rothschild, the ECI's director, in a news release, which also lists all the institutions receiving grants. Rothschild described the new projects as 'diverse in scope, approach, and context.'
'Lilly Endowment's founders firmly believed that character formation is essential to the flourishing of individuals, families and the larger society,' said N. Clay Robbins, Lilly Endowment's Chairman and CEO, in the university's announcement. 'We are gratified to see increasing interest from colleges and universities across the country in deepening their own work in character education, and we are pleased to be able to help them do so. More than ever, it is imperative that a new generation of morally and ethically grounded leaders is educated to rebuild trust and enhance civic engagement in our country and world.
Many of the ECI projects incorporate ideas drawn from the 'Seven Strategies for Educating Character,' developed by Lamb and others to help students develop desirable virtues like courage, humility, honesty, integrity, compassion, and empathy. 'These strategies offer a framework for deep reflection, habituation through practice, and continual engagement with ideas about what it means to live a good life,' said Lamb. 'This work requires intentional and sustained effort from both educators and students. Put another way: there are no shortcuts to character education.'