The Learning Ecosystem for Empowering Futures (LEEF) serves as a networked support system to improve teaching and learning at UNT. LEEF brings together three related areas of work that are often disparate in higher education systems: curricular alignment, learning research, and educator development. Importantly, LEEF does not function as three siloed areas, but instead as a coordinated body that works with and for all members of the university. We aim to enact meaningful and lasting improvements that significantly enhance students' college experiences and trajectories after graduation, as well educators' wellbeing and growth within the system. Ultimately, LEEF envisions a thriving university community that is empowered, agentic, and nimble in the face of changing educational and societal landscapes.  

LEEF functions in dual roles: (1) a responsive body to university-wide initiatives and emergent needs from practice (e.g., educator-expressed needs connected to instruction); and (2) as a generative body that anticipates and drives changes that will enhance teaching and learning experiences at UNT and improve the surrounding systems for sustainability of change. 

LEEF is led by a combination of faculty and staff directors who provide varied expertise and professional insights from within the higher education system. LEEF is also made up of students, staff, fellows, and faculty advisors, who provide integral perspectives into the realities of the university system that inform our collective work at UNT. LEEF additionally partners with key units on campus committed to student, faculty, and staff success (e.g., Offices of Student Success, Faculty Success, Libraries) to ensure synergistic and coherent efforts across shared goals.

LEEF is also a research entity that's engaged in the work of institutional transformation. This includes studying what we are doing on campus and efforts to enact change at scale that impact teaching and learning at UNT and could have broad impact on our surrounding region. While the Learning Institute serves to support external funding efforts toward PI-driven projects, the scope of LEEF as a research unit is more comprehensive, examining in real-time effectiveness of initiatives, studying support systems for teaching, and advancing change while studying the process itself. Our Research & Evidence team helps to provide much of these real-time insights.

One of LEEF's primary aims is to act as a broker between problems of practice and support such as professional learning, curricular solutions, course development, and research partnership. LEEF serves as a landing place for problem-solving and innovation, and as a catalyst for imagining and enacting desired systems and approaches that impact teaching and learning at UNT. We recognize that serving in this capacity requires continuous and intentional learning, relationship building, open communication, and transparency.  

LEEF Vision and Purpose