We’re delighted you’re here.
Whether you’re a student preparing for a meaningful career, a faculty member exploring new collaborations, a leader seeking to strengthen your organization, or someone simply curious about character, leadership, and human flourishing, we welcome you to the Institute for Character and Leadership.
We believe that leadership begins with character, that organizations flourish when people flourish, and that scholarship finds its highest purpose when it helps improve lives.
We invite you to explore our community, our work, and our vision for a more flourishing future.
The Institute for Character and Leadership (ICL) at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) exists to help individuals, organizations, and communities flourish.
Through research, education, executive development, strategic partnerships, and interdisciplinary collaboration, we bring together scholars and practitioners committed to strengthening character, developing ethical leaders, and translating ideas into meaningful action.
Whether you are a student preparing for a meaningful career, a researcher advancing new knowledge, an educator shaping future generations, or an organization seeking to strengthen leadership and culture, we invite you to explore how character can transform leadership, and how leadership can transform lives.
As Fairleigh Dickinson University’s only institute, we bring together interdisciplinary scholarship, evidence-informed leadership development, executive education, and meaningful partnerships to help people and organizations become their very best.
Our work is grounded in a simple conviction:
Character is not merely something we study.
It is something we cultivate.
Leadership is not merely something we teach.
It is something we practice.
Human flourishing is not merely something we imagine.
It is something we help create.
Every visitor comes to the institute with unique experiences, questions, and aspirations.
Wherever you are on your journey, we invite you to begin here.
Develop the character, leadership, and practical wisdom needed to flourish throughout your life and career.
Advance compassionate leadership, practical wisdom, and flourishing across healthcare education and practice.
Strengthen trust, develop leaders, and build organizational cultures where people and performance flourish together.
Collaborate across disciplines to advance scholarship that serves individuals, organizations, and society.
These three ideas define our work.
Helping people become the kind of leaders others trust.
Developing individuals who strengthen organizations, relationships, and communities.
Creating the conditions in which people, organizations, and society can thrive.
Together, these commitments shape every workshop we teach, every partnership we build, every research project we pursue, and every conversation we host.
The institute brings together four complementary centers united by one shared purpose.
Together they advance research, education, leadership development, mental wellbeing, empathy, and character across higher education and society. Learn more.
The Center for Character Development supports the growth of strong character and ethical decision-making within the FDU community. Through programs, resources, and collaborative initiatives, the center aims to help students, faculty, and staff build the values and skills needed to lead with integrity.
This center teaches empathy as a strategic, learnable skill rather than a soft trait, framing it as an antidote to today's social division, burnout, and hostility. It promotes a "Binocular Perspective" model balancing empathy for others with empathy for oneself, combining psychological research with practical training to improve how people listen, lead, and connect.
This center provides tools and resources to raise awareness and promote best practices for reducing mental health stigma across individuals and communities. Building on FDU's decades of mental health services and stigma-related work, it partners with governmental, health, and educational organizations statewide toward a stigma-free New Jersey.
This center works to promote character-driven leadership development across FDU's curricula, co-curricular activities, and staff/faculty programming, acting as a cross-divisional hub collaborating with existing offices across all three campuses. Recent milestones include launching the first annual TEDxFDU event across all three campuses and developing a 12-credit interdisciplinary undergraduate certificate in leadership.
Helping organizations translate research into leadership.
Whether working with healthcare systems, businesses, schools, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, or community leaders, our programs equip individuals and teams to lead with greater wisdom, trust, courage, and purpose.
Featured opportunities include:
Thought-provoking conversations with many of today’s leading scholars, practitioners, and organizational leaders exploring character, leadership, and human flourishing.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy podcasts.
Learn More About the Flourishing Leaders Podcast.
Whether you’re interested in research, executive education, speaking engagements, strategic partnerships, or simply learning more about the institute, we’d be delighted to hear from you.
Together, we can cultivate character, inspire leadership, and advance human flourishing.
Contact the institute at ICL@fdu.edu.