Grant awarded to Office of Spiritual Life to boost character education at Furman

A $50,000 grant awarded to the Office of Spiritual Life (OSL) at Furman University is aimed at building character education at the university. The capacity-building grant is from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI), part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University.

Vaughn CroweTipton, university chaplain and associate VP for Spiritual Life, and associate professor of religion.

Furman is one 42 universities across the nation to receive the grant. Alexis Carter Thomas, associate chaplain at Furman, said the funding will help the Office of Spiritual Life work with faculty and staff campuswide to set up seminars, Cultural Life Program events, student surveys and immersive experiences for students that focus on elevating values-based education. Thomas and co-principal investigator, Vaughn CroweTipton, university chaplain and associate vice president for Spiritual Life, crafted the proposal to ECI.

Character education programming at universities isn’t widespread, Thomas said, but there’s a renewed interest in it according to a Wake Forest case study. While Furman has a set of core values it stands behind, the grant will help further define those values, determine how the university is “living into” them, and identify ways to improve, she said.

“We have first-year programs that incorporate virtues,” said Thomas, adding that Furman’s Cothran Center for Vocational Reflection, Heller Service Corps and other groups on campus also instill moral and civic values.

“What Wake Forest’s ECI is doing is extending an opportunity for universities to be more intentional in their language – what does it mean to have integrity, to be honest, to be an advocate – to have deep conversations about justice and equity,” she said.

Faculty seminars tentatively set for August 2025 and May 2026 will help guide the OSL in crafting surveys that measure student sentiment around character-building and where the opportunities exist to create programming to shore up any gaps in character education.

Ultimately, Thomas believes character formation is important and will always have a place at Furman as a central component of leadership.

“Character is in the air. Character affects how we do life together, how we coexist,” she said. “I think college is a time where emerging adults are learning and being exposed to the world that’s way beyond themselves, and they’re grappling with who they want to be and how they’ll show up in the world. The chance to impact that – to provide tangible opportunities to think deeply about that – is a great privilege.”