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 will be accepting Expression of Interests for LEAF Seed Grants as part of the winter intake cycle beginning in January 2024 and due on Tuesday, February 27, 2024.

Below, learn more about LEAF, the submission process and explore profiles of previous recipients.

Events & Resources

The OVPIUE has created a budgetary and assessment resource to support LEAF. If you are interested in accessing these resources, please send an email to vp.iue@utoronto.ca.

Throughout the year, the OVPIUE 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

LEAF Workshop: Building an Effective LEAF Application

Thursday 27 July, 10:00-11:30 a.m. via Microsoft Teams

We are hosting a workshop designed for instructors and staff who may be interested in applying to the LEAF program. This session will cover everything you need to know about applying to LEAF, from the Expression of Interest process through to completing your project. To learn more or to 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.