News

St. Olaf College has received a $630,000, three-year Institutional Impact Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI), which is part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. 

The St. Olaf project, titled “Character in Community,” will help students engage in intentional character and leadership development by fostering critical and engaged opportunities to identify and learn from exemplars. Led by Associate Professor of Religion Anthony Bateza, the project will involve students, faculty, and staff, and will infuse and incorporate reflection on character education throughout the campus community. 

“This was a highly competitive and transformative grant to receive, and I am excited to help shape this important work,” says Bateza, who also chairs the college’s Race, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. “There is a rich and diverse array of exemplars that people learn from — those individuals and communities that teach and inspire us to better live out our commitments to the world. This project provides us with an amazing opportunity to reflect critically and explore the robust ways that character, community, and the common good are interrelated.” 

This grant will challenge students to gain education on how to develop their motivations and virtues to enable them to live out their sense of calling at St. Olaf and beyond. The grant from ECI will accomplish this by:

• Fostering the disposition and capacity of St. Olaf students to engage in intentional character development, oriented to discern and pursue the common good, by working in community to identify, assess, and apply learning from exemplars. 
• Enhance the professional preparation and confidence of our faculty and staff to undertake this work. This will be accomplished through developing resources, events, seminars, and workshops focused on professional development.
• Gather formative evidence, and pilot strategies for gathering summative evidence, of the quality and impact of the character education program, and use results to strengthen program quality.
• Expand engagement with character education among higher education professionals within and beyond St. Olaf.

“St. Olaf prides itself in not only preparing students for their future careers, but for developing the tools to navigate challenging situations in work and in life with action and substance,” says President Susan Rundell Singer.

“Character in Community” will begin developing the program materials and participating in key community groups during the 2025–26 academic year. The program will develop multiple communities of character inquiry and practice comprised of students, faculty, and staff. This will allow community participants to shape the project throughout, applying what they learn to course construction, student research, experiential learning, and to develop potential credentialing opportunities.

This work builds upon current programs and opportunities at St. Olaf. Currently, these programs — including the Character Focus Initiative, Ole Leadership Academy in Athletics, several college-endowed centers and an institute, and the Open, Linked, Enduring (OLE) Curriculum — individually encourage character development in areas of academic performance, career exploration and mentorship, civic engagement, civil discourse, student leadership, and vocational discernment. The new “Character in Community” grant will tie all of this work together, providing greater strength and depth.

ECI from Wake Forest University Program for Leadership and Character, funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc., aims to support a wide community of more than 400 institutions to educate character within colleges and universities. This year’s grants are composed of teams of faculty, staff, and administrators at U.S. colleges and universities with outstanding proposals for developing the moral, civic, and/or intellectual character and capacity of faculty, staff, and students.

Additionally, this work is supported by Bateza’s award with the Academic Leadership Fellowship from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) consortium, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation. As an ACM Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow, Bateza is working to combine his research related to questions of virtue and character throughout history with the college’s goals of fostering a community of leadership and character on campus.