This schedule is a list of LEAD events for the upcoming school year. Please keep in mind that due to unforeseeable circumstances, all dates are subject to change. Note that all LEAD sessions will occur on Wednesdays from 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm. LEAD is a graduation requirement and all sophomores must attend these classes. Should students fail to meet the attendance requirements, they will be subject to repeat LEAD their following academic year. For any questions, please contact the Program Coordinator, Emma Wilson.
CORE: First Semester
CORE is an introductory seminar on leadership and its applications. In addition to academic leadership theory, students explore a multitude of topics in the social sciences and psychology and focus on how those topics relate to leadership. Furthermore, students construct an understanding of their own positions on complex issues in leadership. Heavy emphasis is placed on peer-to-peer facilitation and engaging discussion when in the classroom environment. Facilitators do not lecture. Students are expected to become active participants in their own education. In CORE, students are challenged to reconsider the notion of leadership objectively and curiously. Ultimately, students are better able to comprehend their own identities as leaders.
Elective Choices: Second Semester
Entrepreneurial Activism
The purpose of SocEnt is to foster entrepreneurial skills and social thinking in students and emphasize leadership in those fields. It is structured to focus on theory, applicability, and creativity. As a part of SocEnt, groups of sophomores are given the opportunity to create a social entrepreneurial venture (SEV) that targets social issues impacting their local community. Each student group project seeks to address a social justice issue and students are to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals when choosing their subject matter. The four broad categories students chose from are environment, energy, social justice, and economy. In the SocEnt elective, most student projects focus on good health and well-being, education, decent work, and economic growth, industry, innovation, and infrastructure, and lastly sustainable cities and communities.
Enabling Activism
EnACT allows students to analyze public policy while learning about politics and our government. Students learn about political discourse through the process of creating a policy portfolio. Students are introduced to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are asked to find the cause of one of these issues. Student projects attempt to solve one of the UN SDG’s by creating their own public policy proposals. Students choose a public policy that will focus on one of the four following umbrella categories: environment, energy, social justice, and economy. In the EnACT elective, most student projects focus on zero hunger, gender equality, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities, responsible consumption and production, peace, justice, and strong institutions.
Information Motivating Public Activism
IMPACT allows students to explore the informative power of data journalism. Students learn about both the data analysis aspect and the storytelling aspect of data journalism; module topics include media bias, misleading statistics, FOIA requests, data in politics, and much more. By the end of the year, each IMPACT student will have contributed to a project that uses data analysis and visualization to profile an UN Sustainable Development Goals. The four umbrella categories students chose from are environment, energy, social justice, and economy. In the IMPACT elective, most student projects focus on no poverty, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action. The goal of the IMPACT program is to provide students a stronger understanding of how to find trends and meaning in mass amounts of information.
