Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) is a national initiative that champions the importance of a twenty-first-century liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality. Through LEAP, hundreds of campuses and several state systems are making far-reaching educational changes to help all their students—whatever their chosen field of study—achieve a set of essential learning outcomes fostered through liberal education. In numerous LEAP projects and activities, AAC&U partners with campuses, state systems, and K-12 educational leaders as they make these essential learning outcomes a framework for educational excellence, assessment of learning, and new alignments between school and college.
Launched in 2005, LEAP challenges the traditional practice of providing liberal education to some students and narrow training to others. LEAP engages the public with core questions about what really matters in college; connects employers and educational leaders as they make the case for the importance of liberal education in the global economy and in our diverse democracy; and helps all students achieve the essential learning outcomes. Through LEAP, AAC&U calls on the United States to “make excellence inclusive” so that all students receive the best and most powerful preparation for work, life, and citizenship.
LEAP Promotes:
Essential learning outcomes—as a guiding vision and national benchmarks for college learning and liberal education in the 21st century
Authentic Assessments—probing whether students can apply their learning to complex problems and real-world challenges
Inclusive Excellence—to ensure that every student gets the benefits of an engaged and practical liberal education.
LEAP works both with individual campuses and in a series of LEAP States all working to advance systemic change and cross-campus collaborations to raise levels of inclusion and success for all students.
The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education recently announced that Kentucky would become the seventh official state partner in AAC&U’s LEAP initiative. Kentucky sought to become a LEAP state because the goals LEAP fit well with the Stronger by Degrees, the state’s plan for improving postsecondary and adult education, said Robert L. King, president of the council. “The assessment strategies and development of high-impact educational practices we will be developing and testing as a part of our involvement with the LEAP initiative will be critical to meeting our goal of increasing high-quality degree production and completion rates at all levels,” King added. Kentucky is also one of eight states involved in AAC&U’s new Quality Collaboratives initiative, funded with support from the Lumina Foundation.
New Issue of Diversity & Democracy Highlights Recommendations from Forthcoming Report on "Civic Learning and Democracy's Promise"
Higher education plays an important role in equipping today's students with the skills, knowledge, and capacities they need to participate in a diverse democracy. Inspired by a forthcoming report supported by the US Department of Education, this issue of Diversity & Democracy explores how various institutions are enacting civic learning initiatives that prepare students for democratic engagement.
AAC&U Receives $2.2 Million Lumina Foundation Grant to Support Quality Collaboratives in Eight States
AAC&U has received a $2.2 million dollar grant from Lumina Foundation to implement the Quality Collaboratives Initiative, a project designed to support eight higher education state systems in assessing quality learning for all students, including those who transfer between institutions. Quality Collaboratives will work with the systems and with individual institutions to test assessment tools that evaluate students’ achievement based on samples of students’ actual work collected across their courses and regardless of where they begin or end their educational journeys. The project is part of Lumina Foundation’s beta testing of a shared Degree Qualifications Profile.
LEAP
National Leadership Council Meets at Wheaton College
Members of the LEAP National Leadership Council convened at the home of chair Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts on September 9. NLC members discussed strategic directions and opportunities for LEAP to (a) refocus the national dialogue and campus action—attending to issues of student success and achievement of essential learning outcomes through the use of high-impact practices; (b) make liberal education a national priority for economic opportunity, innovation, and global competitiveness; and (c) reclaim the civic purposes of higher education. NLC members affirmed their interest in finding ways to make even more visible employers’ pervasive interest in college graduates who have achieved the LEAP essential learning outcomes.
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 LEAP Presidents' Trust 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.
Higher education plays an important role in equipping today's students with the skills, knowledge, and capacities they need to participate in a diverse democracy. Inspired by a forthcoming report supported by the US Department of Education, this issue of