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Forbes
12-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Wake Forest To Expand Character Education With $30 Million Lilly Grant
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.'
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Ohio Bill Proposes Mandating Success Sequence Education
Not so fast there, ma'am. The Ohio legislature is considering joining the list of states that mandate character education, including the 'success sequence.' HB 269, called the THRIVE Act, would require schools to teach students the success sequence as well as fifteen values 'deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the United States.' Those include trustworthiness, kindness and generosity, respect and care for human life, respect for parental authority, respect for patriotism, respect for religious faith, gratitude, and courage. The success sequence and character education curriculum would be created for grades 7 through 12. The success sequence has been touted by numerous conservative groups. The Institute for Family Studies calls it 'a proven path to the American dream.' The Heritage Society, one of the groups linked to Project 2025, created model state and district policy for promoting the sequence. The sequence is most commonly described as 1) Finish high school 2) Get a full-time job 3) Get married 4) Have children. The promise is that this will lead to a life that will be, if not prosperous, at least free of poverty. It uses individual action, rather than policy and legislative solutions, to address poverty. The success sequence surfaced in 2006 in a report by Barbara Whitehead and Marline Pearson focused on teen pregnancy. Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and the Institute for Family Studies have all popularized the idea. IFS published research that claimed 97% of millennials who followed the sequence avoid poverty as adults. Critics have pointed out problems with that research. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute noted that it confuses correlation with causation: Ownership of a private jet is even more strongly associated with financial success, yet that doesn't mean jet ownership is what allowed these individuals to escape poverty. And we certainly shouldn't blame the poor for the failure to pursue jet ownership. Matt Bruenig writing for People's Policy Project noted two issues. One was that the bit of research often cited made different assumptions about what the sequence actually involved (e.g. Should students get a job right out of high school, or after they are 21?). More importantly, the research simply omitted huge numbers of poor people from its data base. Rachel Cohen Booth, writing for Vox, questions the sequence itself: There's little to back up the claim that the exact sequence matters. A 2021 study funded by the federal Department of Health and Human Services found that young adults who finish high school, work full time, and get married are less likely to experience poverty, but the specific order doesn't seem to matter much. The sequence raises many questions. Should both young men and women get a full time job before marriage and children? The Heritage Foundation has also argued that women are spending too much time getting education, thereby hurting the nation's birth rate. But if new sequence-aware couples are getting starter jobs just out of high school, how are they supposed to afford having a baby right away? And what about all the other societal factors that affect poverty? If the success sequence is important, why not pursue policy goals that would support it (such as cheaper child care, or easily available birth control) rather than simply making it one more thing that schools are mandated to teach? The bill's main sponsors are Kevin Ritter and Johnathan Newman, both freshman representatives. Newman is a 'pastor entrepreneur' who has started a new Southern Baptist affiliate church. Ritter has run a business, taught history, and co-founded a Veritas Classical Academy. 'Our public schools are crucial partners in this mission. A well-rounded education is more than reading, writing and arithmetic. It includes teaching kids that good life choices will enable them to thrive and be happy,' said Rep. Ritter, quoted by American Family Association. 'Our bill also teaches what I call Grandma's Recipe for Success. If you graduate high school, get a job, get married and have kids, in that order, you're going to have a pretty good life. Of course, we may not always follow what grandma says, but we all know it's good advice kids need to hear.' The idea sounds appealing, but Grandma probably didn't follow the sequence. 1970 was the first year in our country's history that more than half of Americans graduated from high school. Tennessee and Utah both now have laws requiring that the 'success sequence' be taught in school. Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas considered similar laws this year. I reached out to Rep. Ritter's office; if he offers comment, it will be added to this post.
