Bellarmine University received a prestigious 2025 Educating Character Initiative (ECI) Institutional Impact Grant for $250,000 from the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. One of
only 33 universities selected out of 170 applicants nationwide
for this competitive honor, Bellarmine will use the three-year grant to launch an innovative fellowship program that integrates character education into community-engaged learning.
This new initiative – Character, Community, and Collaboration: Integrating Character into Experiential Learning – will fund teams of faculty members, undergraduate students, and community partners to collaboratively design and teach new courses
for the core curriculum of classes that all undergraduate students take. These courses will explore character development through hands-on engagement with Louisville-area nonprofits and community organizations. The project is rooted in Bellarmine’s
Catholic mission and inspired by the life and legacy of Thomas Merton, the 20th-century monk and author whose papers are housed on Bellarmine’s campus.
Bellarmine will create nine new community-engaged courses over three years, directly impacting more than 180 undergraduate students. Each course will emphasize virtues such as empathy, humility, and openness to difference – skills that are increasingly
vital for leadership. These new hands-on courses will further strengthen Bellarmine’s reputation as a leader in preparing graduates for lives of impact and purpose. 99% of recent graduates were employed or pursuing advanced education within
six months of graduation, an outcome that is 14% higher than the average for all U.S. colleges and universities.
“We’re excited to take this next step in our work around character education and believe that the goals of the Educating Character Institute align perfectly with our mission as a Catholic liberal arts university to prepare students not only
for successful careers, but also for lives rich in meaning and purpose," said Dr. Jon Blandford, Bellarmine’s assistant provost and the university’s lead for the grant-funded initiative. “We are confident that our students
and community partners will benefit from this project, and that it will strengthen our efforts to form the next generation of leaders of character who will serve our city, commonwealth, and region.”
The grant builds on foundational work supported by a 2024 ECI capacity-building award that brought faculty at Bellarmine together across disciplines for sustained conversations around character, virtue, and the role of dialogue in a dynamic world. That
effort was anchored in Merton’s belief in the intrinsic dignity of every person and his evolving commitment to justice, peace, and interfaith understanding.
Bellarmine’s Center for Community Engagement will co-lead the initiative, bolstering the university’s national leadership in high-impact experiential learning. Last year, Bellarmine received the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification
for Community Engagement, one of only two private institutions in Kentucky and 368 universities nationwide to hold this distinction.
Nonprofit organizations interested in collaborating with Bellarmine on this initiative should reach out to Dr. Liz Todd Byron, Bellarmine’s executive director of experiential learning and community engagement, at
etodd@bellarmine.edu for more information.
The Educating Character Initiative, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., supports colleges and universities in embedding character education across campus. The program is part of Wake Forest’s
Program for Leadership and Character,
which aims to inspire and empower ethical leaders through teaching, research, and public engagement.