A professor at SUNY Fredonia has received a mini-grant for a new leadership project. Dr. Angela McGowan-Kirsch, a faculty member in Fredonia's Department of Communication, received the grant through her participation in the 2026 Innovations in Democracy cohort, a national initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and Unite America. The program brings together faculty and staff from AASCU institutions to explore nonpartisan approaches to democratic participation and translate that learning into action-oriented projects on their campuses. During the past summer, cohort members participated in virtual professional development, exchanged ideas with colleagues from institutions across the country, and received individual project coaching as they developed initiatives for the 2026-2027 academic year.
McGowan-Kirsch used the work to develop a project centered on the university course LEAD 201 and its Leadership Consulting Project, a major team assignment in which students investigate real organizational or community leadership challenges, gather and evaluate evidence, apply leadership theory, consider stakeholder perspectives, and develop practical, evidence-based recommendations. The project asks students to consider not only what decision leaders should make, but how that decision should be made and who should be involved in making it. LEAD 201 is a new Fredonia Foundations General Education course in the Humanities category and incorporates SUNY’s new Civic Discourse competency.
The $1,500 Innovations in Democracy mini-grant supports implementation of the project this fall and funds the new Democratic Leadership Project Fellowship, which gives a SUNY Fredonia student the opportunity to work alongside McGowan-Kirsch on the initiative. Cooper Corcoran, a junior majoring in music composition with a minor in computer science, has been chosen to work with McGowan-Kirsch.
