ż’s awarded 2025 Capacity-Building Grant

The grant from the Educating Character Initiative will support development of a collaborative curriculum focused on social justice.
Side-by-side portraits of Sophie Hunt and Rachel Neiwert.

The project is led by co-principal investigators Sophie Hunt, PhD, director of the Center for Community Work and Learning (left) and Rachel Neiwert, PhD, associate professor of history and CORE director (right). Photos by Rebecca Zenefski Slater ’10

The Educating Character Initiative (ECI), a part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University,  ż as a 2025 recipient of their  this week.

Capacity-Building Grants support colleges and universities in their efforts to develop and educate student character across their curriculum or culture, fostering values in alignment with their institutional missions. The ECI, founded in 2023 with support from Lilly Endowment Inc., aims to educate and build communities of character in higher education and beyond.

ż’s is one of 42 institutions nationwide awarded a grant this year for its proposal, Leading for Social Justice: Creating a Collaborative Curriculum to Foster Love of Dear Neighbor. The project will build the University’s capacity to enrich and expand character education through the core curriculum, furthering the community-engaged learning central to The Reflective Woman course. Through community conversations, professional development, assessment, curricular planning, and student leadership development, it aims to build a scaffolded community-engaged curriculum that fosters love of the dear neighbor in students. 

The year-long, $49,884 grant starts summer 2025 and will be led by co-principal investigators Rachel Neiwert, PhD, associate professor of history and CORE director, and Sophie Hunt, PhD, director of the Center for Community Work and Learning.

“The charism of University founders the Sisters of St. Joseph, to love the dear neighbor without distinction, has inspired generations of Katies to engage deeply and authentically with their communities,” Hunt said. “I'm excited to come together to discuss what this charism means for our curriculum and how community-engaged learning can further support students' development as social justice leaders.”

“Our students see and want to do something about the injustices and inequities they see in the world around them,” Neiwert added. “Building our capacity to engage students in community-engaged learning will help them to build skills in acting to bring about greater justice in their communities."