Wake Forest University Awards Salem College an Educating Character Initiative Grant

Winston-Salem, NC (June 21, 2024) – Salem College has recently received a $40,000 Capacity Building Grant from Wake Forest University’s (WFU) Educating Character Initiative of the Program for Leadership & Character. The grant will support Salem’s project, “Touchstones for Character: Gender, Care, and Justice” led by Salem College Associate Professor and Program Director of Religious Studies Dr. Diane Lipsett.

As part of the Program for Leadership and Character at WFU, the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) awarded the grant to Salem College. The program’s mission is to inspire, educate, and empower leaders of character to serve humanity with a key goal to strengthen educational institutions, like Salem, with the ability to build character through innovative teaching, creative programming, and to foster an inclusive culture of leadership.

“I am thrilled Salem received a Capacity Building Grant from Wake Forest,” Dr. Lipsett said.

“With this grant, Salem will expand and deepen how we understand and cultivate character within our innovative Engaging Ethics program and our RISE Leadership Development Program. As a women’s college with a diverse student population, Salem seeks to bring distinctive insights to the growing ECI network of institutions and educators and to learn from other partners,” she added.

The Engaging Ethics program at Salem College challenges students to grapple with ethical issues within the academic core and throughout a range of campus experiences, while the RISE Leadership Program develops women as leaders to create a healthier world. Both Salem programs will be strengthened by the ECI Capacity Building Grant. Fresh resources and approaches will support faculty and staff initiatives and student leader development, with a particular focus on gender, care, and justice.

The grant is part of a $30.7 million grant awarded to WFU from the Lilly Endowment Inc., a private philanthropic foundation that supports the causes of community development, education, and religion. The overall grant supports WFU’s program to create a national higher education network devoted to educating character.

About Salem College

Salem College provides women a liberal arts education with a distinctive focus on health and leadership ensuring our graduates understand the power, importance, and complexity of health in our society. Salem College prepares students for a range of career paths to lead in making the world a better, healthier, more equitable place. Salem College is the only national liberal arts college exclusively focused on developing the health leaders of tomorrow.

News media contact

Meagan Coughlin, APR
(336) 721.2665
meagan.coughlin@salem.edu