What Ascend Students Do Between Events: Webinars, Projects, and Real-World Learning

Quick Answer: Between Ascend’s four major events, students attend expert webinars, meet with their teams, take online courses, work on personal projects, and connect through peer-led activities—all designed to build practical leadership and life skills.

Each year of the Ascend program is built around a series of four live training intensives that bring students together every 12 weeks. For students, these events are packed with content, team assignments, projects, and meaningful time together as a class. But there’s also a lot that happens between each Ascend event. This article is going to give you a look inside those 12 weeks between APEX and Basecamp, Basecamp and Ridgeline, and Ridgeline and Capstone. Let’s dive in!

Ascend Webinars

During the first two weeks of every month, Ascend holds expert-led webinars for students across all three years. Aside from the live events, these webinars are a time for the entire Ascend student body to attend lectures together. 

Each month a different speaker gives a presentation on a topic related to their field. These webinars are designed to be relevant, practical, and engaging. The content is always excellent, and at the end of each webinar there is a time for students to ask the speaker questions related to their talk. 

It’s recommended for students to take notes during the webinar in preparation for the next meeting of the month: their team call. 

Team Calls 

During the second two weeks of the month, Ascend Teams hold their official monthly calls to discuss the webinar content, check in with each other, and go over any team-specific assignments or projects for the month. If you were unable to ask your question during the webinar, Ascend Team meetings serve as another opportunity to talk through your question with your teammates. As well as being a time where teams discuss program-related topics, Ascend Team calls are also a lot of fun! Teams will chat, play games, and get to know each other better. Your Ascend Team plays a big role in your community experience throughout the year, and these intentional monthly meetings help foster those connections.

Ascend Courses

One of the main things students will be working on between events is the Ascend coursework. Each Ascend year has different classes that build upon each other and also the coursework from the year before. 

Foundations students are required to take Navigate, Unbound’s decision-making and life purpose course, as well as the three Signature Leadership Courses. These are all about building a strong foundation in practical life and leadership skills that will help give you a boost as you move on to the next phase of your life. 

Challenge students take three different courses throughout the year: Tactical Communications, Christianity & Cultural Engagement, and Financial Advantage. These courses are designed to build on what you learned in Foundations and apply it to more specific subject-areas, digging deeper alongside your classmates. 

Finally, in Launch, students will attend quarterly online intensives for customized professional development, as well as attending monthly masterminds with their fellow Launch classmates. In this final year, students take everything that they have learned from the two previous years and bring it all together in preparation to launch into the next phase of their life.

Project work

The Ascend projects are at the heart of the program, and also make up a big chunk of what you will be doing between events, especially during the second half of the year as you work on executing your project plan. 

Early on, students will pick a project idea based on certain parameters that differ slightly between the three years. Foundations projects are about bringing an idea that personally interests you to reality, Challenge projects focus on helping bring someone else’s idea to reality, and Launch projects require you to lead a team to bring either your own or someone else’s idea to reality. 

Projects are split into three phases: brainstorming, execution, and reflection. Each phase coincides with a live student event that helps develop the skills needed to complete your project.

Empower Calls/Student-led activities

Outside of academic and team building work, the Ascend student body finds plenty of ways to connect between events. 

Empower Calls are student organized discussions where anyone can join in a conversation about a certain topic, ranging from fun activities or anecdotes to deeper theological discussions. 

Several of these happen every month, and the topics and hosts are chosen by the Empower Call Managers, which is a student internship team. 

Aside from Empower Calls, students will utilize silent study meetings to provide accountability for coursework, as well as plenty of random calls to simply hang out and chat. Game nights, movie nights, and long conversations over Slack help the connections between fellow classmates to grow even while students are spread across the country.

Ascend Events are a lot of fun, they’re foundational to the program, and a highlight of the year for students. However, the time between events is also important, and certainly not dull. 

Ascend courses are different from any other classes you will take, and focus on practical skills that will give you a leg up in life as you launch after high school. On top of that, the Ascend community does not go on pause while students are separated between events, it just adjusts to the change in environment. 

All in all, Ascend is a hybrid program. Which means that instead of isolating you online or limiting your life and professional experience with four years in a campus bubble, Ascend enables you to remain embedded in the real world, gain skill and experience alongside your education, and build a national network for life.

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