Wendy Maragh Taylor, Associate Dean of the College for Student Growth and Engagement, and Leora Gansworth, Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, are the co-project leads for a new Capacity-Building Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI), a project of The Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. ECI offers these Capacity-Building Grants to “provide institutions with the time, resources, and support to discern how character education works best in their context.”

Vassar’s co-leads of the funded project, titled “Going to the Source: An Exploration of Institutional and Individual Character,” will engage participants from across student affairs and academic departments in exploring whether and how “going to the source” might be able to play a central role in defining, developing, and nurturing individual and institutional character at the college.

Grant funds will support a year of activities—including a keynote event open to the campus and Poughkeepsie community, a series of conversations and small-group discussions, and a culminating retreat—focused on how we might collectively define and co-create institutional and individual character.