Learning through Experience, Action, Partnership, and Service (LEAPS) is a student-run organization that is comprised of trained facilitators who work with faculty to design and facilitate reflection sessions for service-learning courses. Students reflect on their service experiences and connect their knowledge from the classroom and community. LEAPS Facilitators receive training through a semester-long house course that explores both the theory and practice of service-learning and facilitation strategies and techniques. In addition to the contribution that LEAPS makes to students in service-learning classes, LEAPS also provides facilitators with the opportunity for developing their own leadership skills in a unique way, working closely with professors, and building upon their own ideas of leadership, service, and learning. Visit LEAPS History for information on the origins of the group.

The mission of LEAPS is to encourage mutually beneficial relationships between Duke students and the Durham community by facilitating service-learning in Duke classes, bringing real-world social issues into the classroom and needed services to the community. LEAPS strives to empower students to be leaders, responsible citizens, and agents of social change through peer education.

Service-learning addresses community issues and needs in the context of an academic course. A service-learning course involves traditional curriculum, volunteer placements at community agencies, and regular reflection sessions. The goal is to blend service and learning--to combine classroom lessons with experience, action, and community partnership. Service-learning allows students to develop a personal connection to what they are learning and provides a context for the application of concepts introduced in the classroom. Service and learning reinforce one another, together yielding a greater impact than either could without the other. Students who volunteer in the community through an academic course can use and test the knowledge they gain, while they are also participating in structured reflection upon and critical discussion of what they see and experience in the communities to which they belong. Service-learning broadens and intensifies education. A student who is actively engaged in service-learning is often exposed to an environment and an experience beyond her comfort zone--beyond what she would ordinarily see--and is challenged to derive meaning from her own response to this distinctive experience. At the same time, learning takes on greater depth through her examination of personal values and beliefs. Classroom lessons are enriched while students learn what it means to be active, responsible citizens in their communities.