RYTE Projects

The RYTE Institute received a three-year Institutional Impact grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The project, led by Dr. Jennifer Brown Urban, Dr. Miriam Linver, and Mirka Feinstein, involves developing an innovative character education course that leverages virtual reality (VR) technology to engage undergraduate students by bringing together a diverse team of faculty, staff, and students across multiple disciplines to create an impactful learning experience. The course integrates fully immersive VR experiences within the general education (SEEDS) curriculum, utilizing Dreamscape Learn technology that enables multiple students to simultaneously inhabit and interact within three-dimensional environments. This approach capitalizes on VR's capacity to create expansive, embodied learning experiences that research suggests can foster empathy, prosocial behavior, and perspective-taking. The curriculum focuses on ten carefully selected character strengths rooted in the Montclair student experience and organized across three substantive modules: aging, technology's role in society, and neurodiversity. The project employs a Relational Systems Practice-informed methodology designed to be flexible, responsive, and continuously adaptive. This approach is deeply participatory and generates rapid feedback loops, enabling the technical, creative, pedagogical, and character development teams to make real-time adjustments throughout the design cycle. The development of this course involves coordination across four integrated working groups: (1) VR experience development (computer science, game design, animation, screenwriting, and narrative design expertise); (2) content area and character development expertise (faculty, staff, students, and community partners); (3) curriculum and instructional design; and (4) program evaluation. Coordination within and across these structures provides opportunities for intentional communication and collaboration across traditional academic boundaries, with built-in mechanisms for cross-team learning.

With funding from the John Templeton Foundation, the RYTE Institute is conducting a longitudinal study to examine student agency and purpose development in AI-supported learning environments, in partnership with Alpha Schools. The project is led by Dr. Elyse L. Postlewaite and Dr. Jennifer Brown Urban examines how Alpha's model, which pairs AI-powered mastery learning with project-based learning and character-focused mentorship from "Guides" (teachers), shapes agency and the foundational experiences from which a lasting sense of purpose can develop. The research follows approximately 100 middle school students using a combination of brief in-the-moment experience-sampling surveys, longitudinal assessments, and interviews to track how students' momentary experiences of agency, interest, competence, and prosocial mindsets relate to their longer-term development of purpose. The study is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, purpose development theory, and Montessori-informed pedagogy. The project will generate both academic research and practical guidance for educators navigating the growing role of AI in classrooms.

The RYTE Institute, led by Dr. Jennifer Brown Urban, serves as the evaluation partner on Character Compass, a multi-pronged initiative undertaken by Outward Bound USA (OBUSA) as a subaward of work funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. The evaluation is designed to strengthen both OBUSA's understanding of student character outcomes and the evaluation infrastructure that supports its national network of programs. A primary focus is assessing student growth in key character domains, including courage, belonging, and reflection, while also examining the broader systems OBUSA uses to measure these outcomes. The evaluation tracks progress toward three strategic priorities: (1) enhancing national curriculum alignment and character focus, (2) expanding student engagement pathways through repeat and progressive learning experiences, and (3) building organizational capacity through improved evaluation systems, technology, and aligned change management across the network. This work includes reviewing and refining OBUSA's internal evaluation tools, strengthening data systems, and analyzing how program structure, such as course duration and frequency, affects character development outcomes. 

Partnering with Arizona State University, and with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, The RYTE Institute conducted a three-year mixed-methods evaluation study examining Communities of Practice as a vehicle for implementing Principled Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation (MLFC). Led by Dr. Jennifer Brown Urban and Dr. Miriam R. Linver, the study evaluated Principled Innovation, MLFC's character-based decision-making framework grounded in the Jubilee Centre's Character Education Framework, which places ethical understanding and character virtues—moral, civic, intellectual, and performance—at the core of innovation, decision-making, and problem-solving. To integrate Principled Innovation more deeply within its systems, MLFC adopted a Community of Practice (CoP) approach within its existing governance structure, creating self-directed, committed teams with a shared purpose to collaboratively enact PI's core principles. Using surveys, social network analysis, interviews, and observations, the study examined how participation in CoPs related to changes in interest, awareness, and use of PI, as well as shifts in peer connections and collaboration around PI across the college. Findings from this study are informing the ongoing refinement and broader scaling of PI, with implications already extending to thousands of students, educators, districts, and communities engaged in character education.

The RYTE Institute received a Teacher-Scholar Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) at Wake Forest University, funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc., to explore the character strengths of students at Montclair State University (MSU). The project, led by Dr. Elyse L. Postlewaite, took a bottom-up, culturally responsive approach to identifying the character strengths and values most important to Montclair students, understanding how those strengths develop, and assessing their alignment with the institutional values Montclair aims to promote. The research team conducted qualitative analysis of 40 student interviews and 8 focus groups to identify key character strengths, which informed the development of a subsequent student survey completed by approximately 160 Montclair students. Findings identified nearly 100 character strengths reflected in student voices and offered early insight into how students' personal character values align with institutional values. Results informed the character strengths prioritized in Montclair’s VR-based character education course (Planting the SEEDS of Character Growth).

Building on the foundational work of the Cultivating Character in Higher Education Project, the Educating Character Initiative awarded a second Teacher-Scholar Grant to continue the line of inquiry also led by Dr. Postlewaite. While the first phase identified the character strengths important to Montclair students, the second phase focused on differentiation: determining which strengths students prioritize when forced to choose among them. The team conducted parallel qualitative and quantitative secondary analyses to systematically reduce the initial set of nearly 100 character strengths to approximately 40 core strengths, which were then used in a maximum differential (MaxDiff) survey to identify a forced-choice ranking of student priorities. This phase also introduced a new focus on institutional belonging, examining how the alignment between students' personal character values and MSU's institutional values related to students' sense of belonging on campus—an especially relevant question given Montclair’s status as a Hispanic-Serving and Minority-Serving Institution.

• Funder: Templeton World Charity Foundation
• Collaborators: World Vision Honduras, World Vision US, World Bank, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras

Youth in Honduras are facing numerous challenges including extreme poverty, natural disasters, gang violence, and political upheaval. The bleak outlook and lack of opportunities in Honduras have led to massive youth migration.

Through their Youth Ready program, World Vision has helped thousands of vulnerable youth across the globe discover their potential, plan for their future, and gain the skills, support, character, and confidence to succeed in work and life. In 2010, the World Bank launched an innovative online program called Evoke that promotes youth leadership through cohort-designed and implemented, community-based activities that focus on resolving global challenges such as literacy, water scarcity, human trafficking, and gang violence. This project integrates these two programs and implements them in Honduras. Our research and evaluation focus on refining the understanding of what drives youth character development and understanding how and to what extent Youth Ready-Evoke produces positive youth outcomes. Building in-country capacity to conduct high-quality research and evaluation is a key component of this project. Best practices and results from this project will be disseminated to enable scalability of youth character development programs around the world.

Related Links for Youth Ready:

Short Video

Youth Character Building

Hope for Honduras

Related Links for Evoke:

Promotional Video

Game Supports Social Innovation

• Funder: John Templeton Foundation
• Collaborators: University of Missouri, St. Louis

teachers is a serious problem for school districts across the country although it is most intense for those serving the poorest and lowest-performing students. Theoretically, Servant Leadership (SL) instantiates the universal truth that service to others quenches a spiritual thirst in humans for leading lives of love and virtue while at the same time filling the functional need in modern institutions for staff who are highly engaged, productive, and resilient. Can the SL virtues of humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and courage be taught through virtue explicit professional development? How can the explicit cultivation of these virtues be integrated into existing in-service school leader programming such as the Leadership Academy in Character Education (LACE)?

RYTE is building the capacity of participating National Schools of Character work-teams to develop high-quality, theory of change (pathway) models for their schools. Due to COVID-19, this work now also includes working with Schools of Character to reflect on and develop models that articulate how their approach to character can inform their return to school with a particular focus on supporting the social and emotional development of students and addressing issues of racial and social justice. The results of this project have the potential to inform schools across the country on best practices for addressing the ever more urgent social and emotional needs of our youth.

• Funder: Templeton World Charity Foundation

Character development is a potential lever for social change and human flourishing. However, most of the research and funding for character/social-emotional development programs have been concentrated in the US and Europe. There is a pressing need to broaden character development research and implementation capacity to non-WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) countries.

Global Partnerships for Advancing Character Program Evaluation (PACE Global), is designed to immediately increase the capacity of practitioners in low- and middle-income countries to evaluate, improve, defend and seek funding for their programs. RYTE provides customized relational capacity-building to aid grant applicants in strengthening their project proposals. This includes providing evaluation and character capacity-building in the form of one-on-one in-person and virtual support, special topic webinars, and speaking engagement. Due to COVID-19, our work with our partner programs pivoted to helping them sustain their programmatic work during the pandemic.

As part of this project, we are providing capacity building for several international programs. A sample of programs we are supporting follows:

1. IRD Pakistan. For most Pakistanis, Lady Health Workers (LHW) are the first—and only point of contact—with the health system. These female frontline healthcare workers address the country’s high maternal and child morbidity and mortality and provide reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health services at the household level throughout Pakistan. LHWs work with the most vulnerable members of the population and are often themselves the victims of violence. This project aims to strengthen and sustain character virtues that can enhance LHWs’ sense of joy, purpose, and self-worth, while also giving them the skills they need to deliver compassionate care across diverse communities.
2. Enhancing Social Responsibility and Prosocial Leadership in Elementary School Children in Brazil. Convivencia—or “coexistence”—is a concept that is of vital importance in a society as diverse and multicultural as Brazil. This project aims to nurture the character strengths central to convivência among school-aged children in Curitiba, Brazil. Specifically, the project aims to test the effectiveness of a program to increase social responsibility and prosocial behaviors as well as reduce peer victimization among elementary school children (grades 4-5).

• Funder: John Templeton Foundation
• Collaborators: Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley

Over the past two decades, research has identified concrete, practical activities that boost character virtues such as gratitude, awe, and generosity. Greater Good in Action (GGIA) is a free, mobile-optimized website (>500,000 annual visitors) featuring more than 70 research-based activities that support a range of character virtues. RYTE is conducting the evaluation of the project. Ultimately, this project will yield scientific insights about character development that inform best practices across clinical and educational settings.

• Funder: John Templeton Foundation
• Collaborators: Dr. Ken Ginsburg and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Dr. Ken Ginsburg and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia established a Center with the mission to empower parents to guide youth towards fine character, wise decisions, healthy behaviors, and good citizenship. The Center reinforces the importance of raising young people amidst hopeful, positive messages that highlight their potential contributions. Web-based resources and social media strategies prepare parents to apply the research-driven principles in found in the character strengths, positive youth development, and effective parenting literature. The RYTE Institute is evaluating the content developed and dissemination efforts of the Center.

• Funder: John Templeton Foundation
• Collaborators: Character Scotland

With funding from the John Templeton Foundation, RYTE Institute conducted a process evaluation and pilot outcome evaluation of Inspire>Aspire: Global Citizens in the Making Values Poster program (I>A). This program was developed by Character Scotland and is a promising character development program that has reached over 200,000 youth across the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries. The fundamental purpose of I>A is the translation of inspiration into transformative and enduring aspiration by asking youth to reflect on their life experience and research inspirational figures. This includes reflecting on their personal values and qualities as active, confident individuals; connected, responsible citizens; sustainable, effective contributors; and flourishing successful learners. A systems evaluation approach was used to conduct a thorough program review in order to articulate a detailed and testable theory of change. As part of the process evaluation of I>A, RYTE Institute measured implementation variability and piloted measures of key outcome variables such as future-mindedness, goal setting and selection and purpose. The RYTE Institute team conducted student and teacher interviews, collected, processed and analyzed survey data, and developed an evaluation plan for the next iteration of the I>A program.

• Funder: John Templeton Foundation
• Collaborators: Character Scotland

The picture we get of today’s youth may seem bleak: they are disengaged from civic life, engage in risky behavior, display confused moral reasoning, and have materialistic goals. Despite these challenges, they have the potential to be engaged, contributing members of society if provided with appropriate supports. Character development programs that help youth identify and reflect on positive values and transform these into meaningful sustained action hold promise for helping youth thrive in today’s world. The Inspire>Aspire poster program, grounded in Sir John Templeton’s Laws of Life, is one such program.

The Big Questions we address are: 1) Can lessons learned from Inspire>Aspire: Global Citizens in the Making be applied to the development and refinement of the next iteration of Inspire>Aspire? and 2) Can reflecting on and writing about virtues espoused in the Laws of Life improve adolescent character?

In the Inspiring Purpose study, together with Character Scotland we are implementing and evaluating the Inspire>Aspire poster program, and providing research evidence that has implications for character education writ large.

The specific project AIMS are: 1) Refine, implement, and disseminate the next iteration of Inspire>Aspire based on results of the process evaluation; and 2) Conduct an outcome evaluation to assess outcomes identified in the programmatic theory of change.

Scholarly publications and program materials will enable broad dissemination of this program. This will result in professional consensus on the relation between positive youth development and character development as essential for the development of youth aspiration and contributions to society. We expect additional schools worldwide to adopt Inspire>Aspire to enhance youth character. We also expect that having evaluation evidence will help Character Scotland attract additional funding from other sources.

• Funder: National Science Foundation
• Collaborators: American Institutes for Research

Informal STEM education needs high-quality program evaluation. Research is particularly needed on the relationship between STEM outcomes and positive youth development (PYD)/socio-emotional learning (SEL). This pilot and feasibility project involved a collaboration between experts in STEM education, out-of-school time programs (OST), PYD, SEL, evaluation, and program development. STEM Scouts helps youth grow in character and develop skills using experiential activities and interaction with STEM professionals. This project expanded the implementation of the Systems Evaluation Protocol (SEP), an evidence-based approach to evaluation planning. The goals were to: 1) develop a theory of change for STEM Scouts highlighting the relationship between STEM outcomes and PYD/SEL outcomes; 2) pilot enhancements to the SEP (System Mapping, Ecosystem Modeling, and Model Validation); and, 3) determine the feasibility of conducting a national STEM Scouts study. STEM Scouts leadership and project researchers worked through the SEP to generate a stakeholder map, logic model, and pathway model (PM). Five STEM Scouts Labs across the country participated in focus groups where they completed ecosystem maps to identify the system in which the Lab exists (e.g., stakeholders and decision-makers), reviewed and revised their system maps, identified key outcomes and connections in the PM, and discussed how the PM reflects their STEM Scouts experiences.

• Funder: S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation
• Collaborators: American Institutes for Research, Boy Scouts of America

The goal of the Boy Scouts of America Building Evidence in Scouting Together (BSA BEST) study was to understand how adult experiences and training impact youth character outcomes. The overarching research questions guiding this national-scale study were:

1. What combination(s) of training and experience lead to the most effective (in terms of instilling character outcomes in youth) adult volunteers in Scouts BSA?
2. How can BSA’s adult trainings and systems be enhanced to strengthen adult practice in support of youth character development?
3. What variations exist relative to adult training implementation in Scouts BSA?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion related research questions were:

1. How are adult leaders addressing diversity and inclusion in their work with youth, and through such efforts, potentially enhancing youth character development?
2. What are youth experiences related to diversity and inclusion in BSA?
3. How does diversity come up, if at all, in Wood Badge and Scoutmaster Position Specific adult training?

The third wave of data collection was conducted just when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States (March/April 2020). Therefore, we were able to add additional research questions related to youth mental health during the pandemic. The research questions were:

1. Are youth with greater sense of purpose less likely to experience anxiety and depressive symptoms during COVID-19?
2. In what ways do youths’ descriptions of their own prosocial behavior align with the relation between purpose and mental health? 

The BSA BEST Study consists of four components with an equal emphasis on each: 1) quantitative surveys, 2) qualitative interviews, 3) observations, and 4) data use. We administered surveys to Scoutmasters, Assistant Scoutmasters, and Scouts across the country at 3 time points. A total of 9667 youth and 4362 adults in 1339 troops participated in at least one wave of survey data collection. We also conducted telephone interviews at 3 time points with about 100 adult leaders and 100 Scouts across the country. We observed Wood Badge trainings in 9 states, including 17 site visits where we were able to observe 326 training participants and 168 trainers. We also observed 4 Scoutmaster Position Specific trainings.

Perhaps most importantly, we focused on data use from the outset. Our primary goal has been to provide research results that are meaningful, actionable, and useful to our partners at BSA. Over the entire course of the study, a data use team met which consisted of representatives from BSA, American Institutes for Research, and Montclair State University. These meetings were punctuated by two data use retreats. The first retreat focused on findings related to training and occurred in-person in Fall 2019. The second set of retreats focused on findings related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and occurred virtually in Summer 2020.

The PACE Project is an innovative approach to evaluation capacity building that offers unique professional development opportunities for staff of youth character development programs as well as evaluators.

For program staff, PACE is designed to immediately increase the capacity to evaluate, improve, defend and seek funding for programs. For current and future evaluation professionals, PACE offers a unique opportunity to develop expertise in evaluation capacity building and innovative evaluation techniques including systems evaluation and person-centered analyses.

The PACE approach is innovative in that it seeks to move beyond evaluation skill-building activities for program staff to also address the more foundational conditions of curiosity, motivation, and careful thinking that drive evaluation work forward. In addition, this Project is organized around a true partnership between evaluators and program staff, in which ownership of the evaluation process is shared, and both sets of professionals bring expertise to the project. Our hope is that this approach will result in sustained relationships between evaluators and youth character development program staff that will remain in place long after the Project concludes, and produce high quality youth character development program and evaluation work for years to come. For more information about the Project, visit the Detailed Project Description.

The PACE Project will support

• 16 youth character development programs, each with a $2,500 award (plus an additional $2,000 for those who continue on to evaluation planning), plus travel expenses
• 8 current or future evaluation professionals, each with a $6,000 award (plus an additional $2,500 per evaluation plan for those who continue on to evaluation planning with 1 or 2 partner programs), plus travel expenses

As a result of participating in the Project, programs and their staff will have:

• Enhanced evaluation capacity
• A well-developed theory of change
• A Program and Evaluation Profile (PEP) that can be used to communicate about the program and its evaluation with stakeholders
• Customized “talking points” that allow staff from participating programs to promote themselves as character/youth development programs and advocate for their approach to evaluation
• An Evaluative Thinking site plan, designed to incrementally improve the organizational culture and communication around evaluation
• An established relationship with an evaluation professional
• Access to a network of participating programs and evaluators

Those programs that choose to develop a complete evaluation plan and implement that plan in partnership with their partner evaluator will also have a formal and detailed evaluation plan.

‌Evaluators will have:

• Increased knowledge and understanding of Evolutionary Evaluation, the Systems Evaluation Protocol, Evaluative Thinking, Person-Centered Analysis, and Character Virtue Development programming
• Experience facilitating Evolutionary Evaluation, the Systems Evaluation Protocol, and Evaluative Thinking activities in an evaluation capacity building context
• Experience partnering with 2 programs to develop: theories of change and Program and Evaluation Profiles (PEPs)
• Experience with evaluation planning in partnership with up to 2 youth character programs (if mutually desired)
• A PACE Project credential from Montclair State University

The PACE Project is organized around a partnership between participating programs and evaluators that includes (for each cohort of programs): 

• 2 workshops
• Several webinars
• Quarterly phone meetings
• A culminating conference
• Ongoing communication with partner program(s)/evaluator and facilitators