In this study, we investigate how the stakeholders of one college of education in a public university integrated a framework of character education into its institutional culture. Building on the notions of sensemaking and sensegiving, we found that the college's character education initiative followed a five-part sequence of sensemaking and sensegiving phases, incorporating an additional key leadership activity which we differentiate as 'sensegathering.' We found that, as the organization regularly developed new iterations of the character education framework, with each iteration, the framework became more deeply rooted in the university's charter and values.