QUEST (Queer Understandings of Equity and Social Transformation) is a leadership development program informed by histories of LGBTQIA2S+ leadership initiatives in the United States, with an appreciation for the transnational character of much of that organizing. Each Spring semester, QUEST is offered in a two-day retreat format over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Stand-alone modules have been offered in the past throughout the year, and the Center looks forward to creating a diversity of opportunities for students to engage in QUEST material in the 2025-2026 academic year.

Each learning module within QUEST explores a theme through a combination of case studies and practical reflections on the work of LGBTQIA2S+ leadership by community leaders, organizers, artist-activists, academics, and significant figures from LGBTQIA2S+ history. By combining podcasts, film, academic publishing, indie media, archival documents, and organizational how-to’s, the program introduces participants to the many forms that leadership knowledge takes and challenges participants to reconsider where and to what extent they already practice leadership.

The program emphasizes leadership activities happening in informal community settings, in grassroots organizations, and in small nonprofits based on the assumption that participants already have access to abundant leadership models in higher education and in large nonprofit organizations. That said, each module will connect the module’s theme to work happening at the LGBTQA Resource Center in order to provoke discussion on how learnings from external case studies might be best translated into work on campus.