Brookdale Community College Receives $50,000 Grant to Advance Character Education

Whyman Center for Transformative Learning to Lead Collegewide Initiative Centered on Compassion, Creativity, Collaboration and Courage

Brookdale Community College has received a $50,000 Educating Character Initiative Capacity-Building Grant to support a one-year initiative designed to more intentionally integrate the College’s newly adopted institutional values of compassion, creativity, collaboration and courage into academic, civic, professional and community life.

Led by Brookdale’s Whyman Center for Transformative Learning, the initiative, Illuminating the Way Forward: Constellating Character Education through Compassion, Creativity, Collaboration, and Courage, will provide a framework for the College to assess existing efforts, identify opportunities for greater alignment and develop strategies for integrating character education throughout the Brookdale experience.

The Educating Character Initiative (ECI) is a project of The Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University and is funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. The initiative supports colleges and universities in developing approaches to character education that are meaningfully integrated into their distinctive institutional contexts, curricula and cultures.

“This is an opportunity to name what it means for Brookdale to live its values,” said Angela Kariotis, director of Transformative Learning. “Compassion, creativity, collaboration and courage are powerful, but character education asks us to go further by creating opportunities to practice those values in how we learn, work, disagree, lead, serve and participate in our community. This year gives us the space to craft those experiences together. When we say ‘Be Brookdale,’ living our values is part of what we mean.” experiences together. When we say ‘Be Brookdale,’ living our values is part of what we mean.”

Rather than developing a stand-alone character education program, Brookdale will build upon existing programs, partnerships and institutional structures to explore how character education can become part of the College’s broader culture.

The initiative will engage programs across the College, including College Success, First-Year Experience, Human Resources and several Whyman Center initiatives, to explore ways to incorporate Brookdale’s values throughout the student and employee experience.

Academic and Institutional Design Teams will help develop learning modules, outcomes and resources for future use by faculty, administrators, and professional staff. Open Doors community mentors will also explore connections among mentorship, reflection, professional identity, and Brookdale’s four values.

Students will play an important role in shaping the initiative. Student focus groups will provide feedback on how students understand Brookdale’s values and how character education can be made meaningful and relevant to their College experience. Baseline and follow-up surveys will also help Brookdale assess awareness and understanding of the newly adopted values and guide future implementation.

The capacity-building year will also extend into Brookdale’s signature civic-learning initiative, Civility Week. Democracy Takes Compassion and Democracy Takes Collaboration will explore how Brookdale’s values can be demonstrated through civic participation, dialogue, community partnerships, and experiential learning.

The initiative directly supports Brookdale’s Strategic Plan 2030, in which the College’s values and commitments serve as a compass for institutional priorities and decision-making. Through the grant, Brookdale will identify and strengthen work already taking place across the institution while developing a shared framework to guide future character education efforts.

About the Educating Character Initiative

The Educating Character Initiative is a project of The Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. The Program inspires, educates and empowers leaders of character to serve humanity and works to foster cultures of leadership and character within higher education and beyond. The Educating Character Initiative, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., supports institutions of higher education in integrating character into their distinctive institutional contexts, curricula and cultures.

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wake Forest University or Lilly Endowment Inc.