Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP)
Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) is an
initiative that champions the value of a liberal education—for
individual students and for a nation dependent on economic
creativity and democratic vitality. The initiative focuses
campus practice on fostering essential learning outcomes for
all students, whatever their chosen field of study. Launched
in 2005, on the occasion of AAC&U’s 90th anniversary,
LEAP is AAC&U’s primary vehicle for advancing and
communicating about the importance of undergraduate liberal
education for all students. LEAP seeks to engage the public
with core questions about what really matters in college,
to give students a compass to guide their learning, and to
make a set of essential learning outcomes the preferred framework
for educational excellence, assessment of learning,a nd new
alignments between school and college.
What's New From LEAP
LEAP Receives $560,000 Grant from the Carnegie Corporation
LEAP received funding for Give Students a Compass, a new project that will
work with public higher education systems in California, Oregon, and
Wisconsin to support collaboration in re-mapping educational aims,
practices, and assessment strategies for general education. The
initiative will be directed by Susan Albertine, who is the new Senior
Director for LEAP State Initiatives in AAC&U's Office of Quality,
Curriculum, and Assessment. The initiative will also conduct a study that
explores educational practices that help underserved students achieve
essential learning outcomes. This study will be directed by Alma
Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President for Education and Institutional Renewal
at AAC&U. Read the full press release.
Cal State Adopts New Gen Ed Learning Outcomes—Enacting First Recommendation from LEAP National Leadership Council Report
The California State University system has established new guidelines for general education requirements developed by the CSU Academic Senate and based on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. This action responds to the very first recommendation made by the LEAP National Leadership Council (NLC) in its 2007 report, College Learning for the New Global Century (pdf). In that report, the LEAP NLC recommended that a “commitment be made to foster the aims and outcomes of a twenty-first century liberal education for all college students.”
AAC&U President and NLC member Carol Geary Schneider notes that “CSU has stepped forward to make the LEAP essential learning outcomes a frame of reference for its own educational work. We celebrate CSU’s leadership and pledge to work with the CSU campuses—and our other partner state systems as well—to help today’s students achieve the kind of liberating education they need and deserve.”
“It is heartening to see California State University—a system that educates many first-generation college students—step up to the plate to provide to all their students the LEAP essential learning outcomes,” said NLC member and president of Education Workforce Policy Roberts T. Jones. “These are the learning outcomes that will ensure these students are prepared for the ever growing workplace expectations of the global economy.”
See CSU press release, their new general education guidelines, and how you can get involved with LEAP.
LEAP on YouTube
See
videos from LEAP
-- including one that makes the case for how liberal education
prepares students for the global economy.
Also on the AAC&U
Channel are examples of how LEAP Campus Action Network members
are helping students achieve essential learning outcomes.
Read "How Should Colleges Assess and Improve
Student Learning?" -- a January 2008 employer
survey showing that business leaders are looking for improvements
in learning outcomes and assessments of integrative and real-world
learning. Download the report
(pdf), or view the powerpoint
presentation on the results.
Read College Learning for the New Global Century (pdf), a report from the LEAP National Leadership Council that identifies the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a 21st century college education. Download full report (pdf), or purchase printed copies. Read also the LEAP Executive Summary (with findings from Employer Survey) (pdf).
AAC&U has also released in 2007 the full results of national polls of business leaders and recent graduates -- "How Should Colleges Prepare Students To Succeed in Today's Global Economy?" (pdf), and examples of LEAP Principles of Excellence in Practice.
The LEAP campaign includes three primary and concurrent strands
of activity:
A Public Advocacy initiative for liberal
education, which is being carried out nationally by the
LEAP National Leadership
Council and regionally through advocacy initiatives
in a series of partner states;
A Campus Action Network which works with
colleges and universities of every kind from across the
country and in selected partner states to articulate high
expectations for liberal education and to transparently
connect their educational practices and assessments to these
expectations;
A research initiative detailing Evidence on Learning
Outcomes, designed to provide evidence on selected
outcomes of a liberal education and periodic public reports
on progress in helping students meet twenty-first century
educational standards.
LEAP Staff Contacts at AAC&U
Coordinating Director: Bethany Zecher Sutton
Advocacy and Public Outreach: Debra Humphreys
Campus Action Network: Alma Clayton-Pedersen
Administrative Assistant: Christina Bell
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