photo by: University of Kansas

The skyline of the University of Kansas is pictured.

The University of Kansas is ramping up its efforts to promote five specific character traits in students and staff, and it now has a nearly $700,000 grant to help with the effort.

The grant from a character initiative organization based at Wake Forest University will support KU’s IRISE Culture Charter initiative, which began in 2023. The IRISE program aims to boost and highlight the values of integrity, respect, innovation, stewardship, and excellence.

A group of IRISE fellows led by philosophy professor Nancy Snow and assistant liberal arts dean Linda Luckey worked to win the grant. The university plans to use the grant money to: communicated the values to student organizations, sororities and fraternities; create a campus-wide publicity campaign; create 30 online courses that incorporate the IRISE values; create or revise 30 traditional courses that cultivate character in students; and publish a journal that highlights the IRISE work happening on campus.

The nearly $700,000 grant to KU was part of $15.6 million of recent grant awards made by Wake Forest’s Educating Character Initiative. The program has a mission of recognizing the importance of character education, and encourages universities to integrate it into their teaching.

Other universities that received grants to implement character programs included Baylor, Pepperdine, North Carolina, Virginia, Villanova, Harvard, and Stanford, among others.