Campus-wide initiatives provide opportunities for libraries to work with faculty and administrators to advance student learning goals. In the southern United States, the regional accrediting organization Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requires each higher education institution to develop a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) as part of the reaffirmation process every ten years. The parameters of the QEP topic are flexible, but the theme must pinpoint issues that affect student learning and develop a plan to address them (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools [SACS], 2012). An appropriate initiative must involve a variety of campus constituencies and explain how it will be implemented, completed and assessed.

Murray State University (MSU), a public, four-year master’s level institution, recently developed a QEP centered on experiential learning. Experiential learning can be defined in numerous ways, but MSU approached it as “a pedagogy that actively engages the student in the phenomena that they are studying. . . . [It] engages students in a deliberate process of hands-on problem solving and critical thinking” (Montrose, 2002).

This article will discuss a case study in which an academic library took a prominent role in the development and implementation of an institutional QEP focused on experiential learning.