Faculty Secure Two Competitive Grants to Advance Creativity@Emerson
Emerson College has received significant national recognition for the strategic initiative, Creativity@Emerson, through two highly competitive grants awarded by the Davis Educational Foundation and The Educating Character Initiative (ECI). Securing support from both funders represents a major milestone for the College and underscores confidence in the vision and goals of Extraordinary Emerson 2030, Emerson’s strategic plan to advance innovation, student success, and institutional excellence.
Since its launch in 2025, Creativity@Emerson has driven the College’s commitment to establishing creativity as an essential core of a modern liberal arts 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.
This spring, Creativity@Emerson faculty leaders Thomas Vogel, Professor, and Carol Ferrara, Associate Professor, both in the Department of Strategic Marketing and Business, successfully secured two grant awards following rigorous competitive review processes.
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 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 proposed minor and certificate in Creative Literacy. The grant will also fund the creation of creative literacy modules— flexible learning experiences that enable students to apply creative tools within their existing courses.
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 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 modules. 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.
More information about The Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University and this year’s grant awardees can be found here.
Through integrating creativity and character education into the curriculum and research across the College, Emerson seeks to prepare graduates who are equipped for ethical leadership, continuous learning, and meaningful engagement with their communities while grounded in the values of a liberal education and a commitment to the shared humanity that connects us all.