Life Skills Development
Practical Matters: Discovering How to Live & Lead in Life
Many of the skills that enable people to be successful in their lives are the same skills that enable them to distinguish themselves as leaders in the workplace. To complement the professional and intellectual foundation provided through your major and the Core, we created LEAD (Life Experience and Action Dimension), a four-year program designed to help you develop life skills that are practical, meaningful and useful and that will serve you throughout your entire lifetime.
Unlike your academic classes, LEAD activities do not receive grades or earn credits; instead, each year you’ll meet a number of goals to gain experience and build skills in certain areas: building inclusive community, lifelong career management and financial sophistication. All students participate in LEAD, and you will have your choice of events, workshops, activities and community service opportunities throughout the year from which to choose to meet your required LEAD objectives each semester.
One of the goals of LEAD is to give you a jump start as you begin your career and life after college, but even more important, the skills and understanding you develop through LEAD will strengthen your ability to adapt your career to changing market conditions, help you make good decisions in difficult situations and teach you how to set and pursue shortand long-term goals successfully—among other desirable character assets that will serve you for a lifetime.
Year 1: Building Inclusive Community
As a first-year student in the LEAD program, you’ll learn how to negotiate problems and respect differences through experiences that broaden cultural awareness. You’ll engage in instructive and gratifying community service and communitybuilding activities such as cooking a meal at the Ronald McDonald House, mentoring a child as part of the DREAM program, getting a feel for what it’s like to be homeless by taking part in our Tent City experience, participating in a cultural simulation or proposing an activity of your own and making it happen.
Year 2: Lifelong Career Management
In keeping with Champlain’s focus on your professional development, you’ll learn about and develop a careermanagement plan and process. You’ll attend our Sophomore Symposium in the fall, a conference-like program with a professional keynote speaker and breakout sessions on lifelong career management topics. In the spring, you’ll continue to focus on building career management know-how and learn how to strategically market yourself by attending a workshop with other students in your major, facilitated by the Career Services Office counselor for your Academic Division.
Years 3 & 4: Lifelong Career Management & Financial Sophistication
In the third and fourth years of the LEAD program, you’ll expand your ability to build your career by choosing from among many professional workshops—social networking, online job research, interviewing skills, building a portfolio— and events that will give you important experience in professional decorum like attending a business networking dinner and job fairs. You’ll also work on developing basic financial literacy skills through in-person seminars and online activities on topics ranging from creating and managing a budget to understanding how to read your credit report and keep it strong, from how to understand leases and contracts to how to manage personal investments—including enrolling in a 401(k).
Poem written by student Christopher Lawless