During winter break, some students and staff took a unique opportunity to expand upon their own knowledge through the Liberal Education and America’s Promise run workshops held right on campus. The organization, also known as LEAP, focuses on empowering students and giving students the necessary tools as they continue through college. And the workshops held this year – which included information on learning outcomes for students earning a bachelor’s degree, principles of excellence for a campus, the practices that provide active learning and the idea of inclusion for all students – fit right into the organizations idea of helping students get as much out of their education as possible.   

“LEAP helps UW-W deliver a transformational education for all students,” said Greg Cook, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. “Since the workshops began in 2011, more than 900 people have participated on 180 different leap teams – all to improve teaching learning and student success at UW-W.”

And the success of the workshops keep growing. Kailey Penn, a LEAP intern and someone who worked closely with the LEAP Council itself, stated that there was a total of 29 teams this year that participated in the workshops. This also happened to be the highest amount of teams the workshops had ever seen.

Still, no time was wasted for any of the participants, as each of the teams got right into learning how to achieve that ‘transormation education’.

“The teams went through learning about what LEAP is and the initiatives in LEAP,” said Penn. “As well as working in their teams to discover how their goal for the semester aligns with LEAP.”

Though winter break has come to an end and with only one semester to go, the LEAP program is still nowhere near finished for this school year, as teams are continually aided in their improvements as they work through the program.

“Through the semester they work more in depth on their programs  and begin to implement these changes around campus,” continued Penn.

The final meeting for LEAP will be held on campus in May, in order to take one last look at the positive outcomes of the year, and can be changed for future workshops in the years to come.