Morehead State commemorates five years of growing success for Level UP program
Morehead State University continues to be at the forefront of Kentucky universities with its Level UP program, providing students with opportunities to gain valuable professional skills and high-impact experiences.
MSU’s Center for Career Development & Experiential Education recently celebrated a milestone in the program’s growing success at the Level UP breakfast on Wednesday, May 6.
Level UP is an initiative to ensure students can engage in experiences that prepare them for success, including undergraduate research, education abroad, service learning, and internships within the courses in their major. The courses focus on building in-demand career skills such as oral and written communication, professionalism, critical thinking, and teamwork, as well as on effectively implementing the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) method to demonstrate what they learned in their Level UP course. This program further focuses on training students to demonstrate these career skills, which are highly desirable to employers across disciplines.
Level UP has continued to expand since its inception in 2021. Over the last five years, the total number of Level UP course sections offered went from 50 in the 2021-22 academic year to 135 in 2025-26. The number of students enrolling in Level UP courses also increased dramatically, from 619 (2021-22) to 2,031 (2025-26), resulting in a total of 782 Level UP distinctions earned as of the fall 2025 semester.
“As I reflect on hitting the five-year mark, I truly can’t believe the success of the program,” said Megan Boone, director of the Center for Career Development & Experiential Education and co-director of Level UP. “Focusing intentionally on a career skill through a high-impact practice and learning to articulate that career skill through the STAR has our students graduating well prepared for their next steps after MSU.”
The celebration also featured student speakers who reflected on the positive impact of their Level UP experience. These included Sarah Houseman, a senior business management major from Monticello; Kayleigh Konrad, a senior elementary education major from Long Island, New York; and Labindra Dhami, a sophomore honors student majoring in finance from Darchula, Nepal.
“Hearing these students share how the Level UP program has benefited them, I am always inspired to keep working to make hands-on experiences and career skill development more explicit and more intentional for our students,” Boone said.
For more information on the Level UP program, contact the Center for Career Development & Experiential Education at levelup@moreheadstate.edu or 606-783-2233.
