Leadership Trust Award to support students’ education, initiative

Each spring, the Leadership Trust Award, offered by the Letters & Science Honors Program, grants up to two students with awards equal to two semesters of tuition (currently totaling more than $8,000) plus project funds up to $3,000.

The awards and the project funds are used by the students to plan, develop and implement projects designed to improve the UW–Madison student body or the broader Madison community.

Eligible students include all currently enrolled L&S honors students (HLA, HM or Comprehensive Honors) with at least one year of undergraduate study remaining. Student should also demonstrate achievement and leadership in co-curricular activities or community service. The deadline to apply for the 2010-11 awards is Monday, March 22.

Winners for 2009-10 included Douglas Yang and Jennifer Mathson. Yang was awarded for his leadership of the University of Wisconsin Literacy Initiative (UWisLit), which trains students to become volunteer tutors of English as a second language, as well as basic literacy. “The financial assistance lifts the burden of tuition costs, thus allowing award winners such as myself to really focus on academics and community service,” Yang says.

After having great experience tutoring English as a second language in high school, Yang sought to provide fellow students with the tools to tutor at UW–Madison. Since UWisLit’s inception in May 2009, a team of six volunteers has turned into more than 40 student volunteers, and services have expanded. As of December, UWisLit members volunteered more than 1,000 hours of service.

UWisLit is now partnering with the Office of Human Resource Development’s Cultural Linguistic Services to provide literacy tutoring services to university employees. “It would be difficult to say that any of this would be possible without the Leadership Trust Award,” Yang says.

Previous awards have led to the creation of Wiscipedia, a student-edited wiki designed to communicate about the university to undergraduates and prospective students, and to the Student Emergency Medical Services, dedicated to giving students hands-on experience and the opportunity to be educated in emergency medicine while offering their services to the university as first responders.

Psychology and zoology professor Chuck Snowdon, who chairs the Faculty Honors Committee, says that the projects of award recipients typically take on a life of their own through successive generations of students. Recipients are awarded seed funding just once and must develop a way to sustain themselves independently.

According to Snowdon, projects such as these, and others eligible for the Leadership Trust Award, show the impact UW–Madison students can have on their neighbors. “These represent some of the best things that students do to go beyond academics and develop new ways of serving the community,” Snowdon adds.

Since the spring semester 2003, the L&S Honors Program has offered this award to foster leadership and community service among students in the Honors Program. The award is granted by the endowment of an anonymous donor. For more information and application instruction, visit http://www.honors.ls.wisc.edu/SiteContent.aspx?id=171