Dr. Mark Manry is one of 12 teacher-scholars to receive a 2025 Teacher-Scholar award by the Educating Character Initative (ECI), a part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. The $9,000 award will support Dr. Manry’s summer research and writing, books and materials, participant incentives, and professional development in relation to the Camino de Santiago Camino GEO.

JFURL at Wake Forest University is to inspire, educate, and empower leaders of character to serve humanity. Through innovative teaching, creative programming, and cutting-edge research, we aim to transform the lives of students, foster an inclusive culture of leadership and character, and catalyze a broader public conversation that places character at the center of leadership.

Since 2017 (https://leadershipandcharacter.wfu.edu/vision-2/our-history/), we have been advancing this mission primarily at Wake Forest, but in recent years many colleges and universities have reached out to solicit advice and share ideas about how to educate character in a university context. Inspired by our motto of Pro Humanitate (for humanity) and supported through a generous grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., we have developed the [Educating Character Initiative] (https://leadershipandcharacter.wfu.edu/eci/) to support a wider community of individuals and institutions to educate character within colleges and universities. Through the creation of a network of interested institutions and educators, the development and dissemination of research and resources, the organization of conferences and convenings, and the direct awarding of grants to individuals and institutions interested in advancing this work in their own contexts, we aspire to nurture a creative, compassionate, and collaborative community of educators who can learn from each other as partners in character education.