Emerson College has received national recognition and support for the strategic initiative Creativity@Emerson, in the form of two highly competitive grants awarded by the Davis Educational Foundation and The Wake Forest Educating Character Initiative (ECI).
Since its launch in 2025, Creativity@Emerson, led by Professor Thomas Vogel and Associate Professor Carol Ferrara of the Strategic Marketing and Business Department, has driven the College’s commitment to establishing creativity as an essential core of education. Directly advancing the Academic Innovation priority of the strategic plan, the initiative expands the study, practice, and performance of creative thinking across every discipline, equipping students with a shared language to articulate how creativity shapes their personal and professional lives.
The Davis Educational Foundation awards approximately two dozen competitive grants each year to colleges and universities across New England, supporting innovative initiatives that strengthen teaching, learning, and student success.
Emerson’s $49,998 grant will support the integration of creativity education into the Emerson curriculum through the development of a first-year pilot course, Cultivating Creativity as a Human Good in a Digital Age. The course is intended to become a cornerstone of Emerson’s undergraduate curriculum and support the development of a soon-to-be proposed minor in creativity studies. The grant will also fund the creation of flexible learning experiences that enable students to apply creative tools within their existing courses.
“I could not be more thrilled with the work on creativity that is being done at Emerson and that is now being recognized with these external grants,” said Provost Alexandra Socarides. “This is an incredible achievement and will have significant effects on the education we provide students. Emerson is a place where creativity is at the core of everything we are, and now we get a chance to study it, to articulate it, and to intentionally embed it into the work we do in new and cutting-edge ways.”
Emerson also received one of 60 grants awarded nationwide by the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) through a competitive grant program supporting the integration of character development into academic curricula and student programming. ECI is part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University and funded through a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Emerson’s $50,000 grant will build on the development of the first-year course by exploring the connection between creativity education and character formation, grounded in the theory that creativity training influences not only idea generation but also identity formation.
Vogel and Ferrara will work with field experts to identify character virtues intrinsic to creative practice, including intellectual humility, integrity, courage, justice, and empathy, and evaluate how students’ identities evolve as they engage with both the first-year course and creative literacy learning experiences. By grounding creative literacy in intentional character development, Creativity@Emerson seeks to redefine creativity not simply as the production of new ideas or content, but as a practice rooted in purpose, responsibility, and the common good.
“We’re thrilled to be part of the dynamic cohort of Educating Character grantees,” said Paul Mihailidis, interim dean of the School of Communication. “At a time of abundant digital realities, creative approaches to learning are necessary for vibrant and healthy civic futures. This grant provides the opportunity to provide creative pedagogies in support of strong character development for our community and beyond.”
Learn more about The Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University and this year’s grant awardees.
Submitted by the Office of Research and Creative Scholarship