The most important leadership lessons you will learn in your time with PLC will be through your experiential education endeavors. You will have the opportunity to experience practical leadership through the Applied Leadership Experience (ALE) process, community dinners, Deep Dives, and through your other involvements both on and off campus. At PLC, we recognize that the best way for you to learn how to lead and how to follow is by experiencing both inside and outside of the classroom.


Experiential Learning is the process of learning by reflecting on hands-on participation; learning through analysis upon direct involvement in experience. PLC believes that students will learn more about leadership through actual experience, being led, and leading others, than through rote classroom instruction. However, the combination of the two - hands-on learning experience, plus, structured reflection and analysis on experience - results in sustainable, significant, transformative growth. Experiential learning is a hallmark of PLC and sets our students apart from those in other leadership development programs. Experiential learning accelerates classroom learning and integrates it with the real world. Through structured and semi-structured programming, students learn how to effectively plan, develop goals, implement ideas into action, and lead others to impact their community and become globally aware citizens. PLC intentionally engages students with the real world through the following initiatives: