Learning & Education Advancement Fund
The Learning & Education Advancement Fund (LEAF) program aims to support the President’s Three Priorities:
- Leverage our urban location(s) more fully, for the mutual benefit of University and City;
- Strengthen and deepen key international partnerships by means of a well-defined strategic focus;
- Reimagine and reinvent undergraduate education.
A two-tiered system of funding, LEAF provides funding opportunities for teaching and learning projects that explore, implement and scale up promising practices at different stages of their development and implementation. Focused on projects connected to the academic curriculum, LEAF creates a pathway for projects from their initial inception to their full potential.
We are currently accepting expression of interests for LEAF Seed and Impact Grants as part of the fall intake cycle. Expressions of Interests are due on Thursday, September 7, 2023.
Below, learn more about LEAF, the submission process and explore profiles of previous recipients.
Events & Resources
Throughout the year, the VPIUE Office and Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation support a number of workshops and webinars of interest to prospective LEAF applicants. Below you can see upcoming events and browse the archive of previous events and other resources
Upcoming Events
U of T Teaching Grants Workshop
Monday 19 June, 2:00-3:00 p.m. via Microsoft Teams
Are you interested in learning about teaching and learning funding opportunities available to U of T faculty and staff? If so, you are invited to participate in a 90-minute online workshop that provides a general overview of four major institutional teaching and learning grants:
· Learning and Education Advancement Fund (LEAF)
· Instructional Technology Innovation Fund (ITIF)
· International Student Experience Fund (ISEF)
· Graduate Education Innovation Fund (GEIF)
We will describe the opportunities available through these funds and explore effective practices regarding proposal writing for funding opportunities that seek to enrich, catalyze and directly impact University of Toronto teaching and learning. We will discuss general strategies and suggestions for successful grant applications and address the main criteria that these proposals should address. To learn more or register, please visit here.
Previous Events
Workshop: Building an Effective LEAF Application: Assessment Strategies for a Meaningful Project
This workshop explores how you measure the effectiveness of a LEAF project. In this session, we examined building a meaningful and integrated assessment strategy from thinking about what sort of assessment tools work for your project to when and how you are assessing your project.
Participants in this session gained an introductory overview of different assessment tools and techniques and clear next steps for how to build an assessment strategy in the context of a teaching grant.
Workshop: Building an Effective LEAF Application: From Idea to Submission
This workshop is designed for instructors and staff interested in applying for the LEAF program. Our workshop explored everything from designing a research question for the Expression of Interest to the basics of building an effective, integrated assessment strategy.
Participants gained insights into strategies and suggestions for successful applications, collaborating with peers on proposals and learned from a panel of former LEAF recipients.
Workshop: Strategies for Writing an Effective Teaching & Learning Grant
In support of instructors and staff interested in the LEAF program as well as the Graduate Education Innovation Fund, the Instructional Technology and Innovation Fund (ITIF) and other teaching and learning funding opportunities, this workshop was jointly hosted by our office, the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation and Academic & Collaborative Technologies.