Taylor Receives ECI Grant for The Virtuous Community: An Honors Guild Initiative

In an age marked by rapid technological innovation, artificial intelligence, and unprecedented access to information, a core question remains: what does it mean to be flourishing humans? For years, higher education has focused on the acquisition of knowledge and skills, and Taylor University, along with other invested institutions, is pairing this with an equally important question: how do we cultivate character and virtue alongside intellectual growth?

Thanks to a new $250,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative—a project of The Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University—the Taylor Honors Guild will have the opportunity to explore these questions in a deeper and more intentional way.

The award marks Taylor’s first from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) and places the university among a select group of institutions across the country. This year, ECI awarded $20.5 million to 44 projects that will directly impact 49 different schools, including high-profile institutions like Yale University and Cornell University. These diverse projects are investing in character-building programming that will ensure whole-person formation remains a value across American higher education.

At Taylor, the grant will support The Virtuous Community: An Honors Guild Initiative, a three-year project designed to integrate virtue formation into the Honors Guild experience. Through curriculum enhancements, faculty development, student research opportunities, and campus-wide conversations, the initiative seeks to strengthen the Honors Guild as a community where intellectual excellence and virtuous living grow together.

Wisdom, Courage, and Humility: Building a Framework for Virtue Formation

The Virtuous Community project grew out of a year-long collaboration supported by an ECI Capacity-Building Grant and led by Dr. Scott Moeschberger, Dean of Global Engagement and Executive Director of the Honors Guild; Dr. Kris Johhnson, Director of Honors Programming & Research; and Dr. Scott Barrett, Assistant Director of the Academic Enrichment Center. 

Faculty from multiple disciplines contributed to the planning process, and Dr. Michael Lamb, the F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character and Senior Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, visited campus to engage faculty and students in conversations on character formation. Those discussions shaped a vision for a four-year framework that integrates virtue formation throughout the Honors program, treating character development not as an isolated topic but weaving it through students’ academic journeys, from their first Honors course through their senior capstone experiences.

The framework focuses on three foundational virtues: wisdom, courage, and humility, and will invite students to wrestle with enduring questions such as:

• How do we use knowledge well?
• How do we stand firm in our convictions in an increasingly complex world?
• How do we recognize the limits of our own understanding?

These questions will serve as guideposts for students as they explore what it means to pursue intellectual excellence as people of character.

Join the Conversation

While this virtue-forming campaign starts with the Honors Guild, Moeschbeger and Johnson’s vision extends beyond the program itself. The Honors Guild has always been a place where ideas are explored deeply and collaboratively, and the Virtuous Community provides the opportunity for Honors to serve as an incubator for conversations on virtue and character across campus.

Honors students will also be a critical part of the integration of these character-building philosophies across campus because "Honors students are present in so many places," Johnson said. "We have many students who are Personnel Assistants and Discipleship Assistants and Presidential Fellows and leaders on their sports teams and various other organizations on campus."

Moeschberger and Johnson shared a hope for Taylor’s unique role in national conversations about character formation.

"This is an amazing opportunity for Taylor—our students, our faculty—to take these broader conversations about virtue development and put them into the context that is Taylor," said Moeschberger. "And then share our unique perspective in broader conversations across the nation."

Speaking to the heart of this initiative and its pursuit of the good and virtuous life, Barrett said, "This growth is all in the context of a life lived with God. Our graduates should not only stand out for the quality of their thinking but also for the quality of their character, reflecting a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus."