Friends University awarded $200,000 Educating Character Initiative Institutional Impact Grant

Friends University has been awarded a $200,000 Institutional Impact Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI), a part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. The three-year project, Flourishing as Friends: Cultivating Character in Communities of Practice, includes multiple university-wide and regional initiatives designed to augment the University’s strategic plan, Vision Flourish, and help create a robust culture of character at Friends and beyond. Funds will support innovative teaching, creative campus-wide programming, and cutting-edge research on leadership and character formation.

Friends University was one of 49 colleges and universities that received Institutional Impact Grants from the ECI in 2026. “We were overwhelmed by the quality of the proposals we received this year,” said Jennifer Rothschild, Director of the Educating Character Initiative. “It is exciting to see so many institutions developing character projects rooted in their own identities and missions. We have so much to learn from these projects.”

Housed at Friends’ Center of Mission-focused Teaching and Learning, Flourishing as Friends projects will be led by center’s director, Dr. Lori Kanitz. “We are thrilled and honored to have been selected as a grant recipient. Friends’ faculty, staff, and leadership are committed to graduating students who have both the character and the professional skills to ‘honor God and serve others.’ This funding allows us to build on the great work begun last year with our $50,000 ECI Capacity-building Grant and launch exciting new initiatives in a comprehensive, campus-wide effort to create a culture of character for the common good.”

For more information, contact:

Dr. Preston Todd
Vice President of Enrollment Management & Student Success
Friends University
Email: todd@friends.edu
Ph: 316-295-5623