Provost IMPACT Award: Cultivating citizen leaders through collaboration

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 30, 2025) — Last fall, the University of Kentucky Office of the Provost announced the second cohort of the Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Accelerate Collaboration and Transformation (IMPACT) Awards winners.

The IMPACT Awards initiative, an internal funding program from the Office of the Provost, launched in 2023 to support innovation and transformation within UK’s colleges. The awards recognize the groundbreaking work conducted by faculty and staff across campus, and they create opportunities for transdisciplinary collaboration to occur between UK community members to help the university’s mission of advancing Kentucky.

In total, 15 colleges, including UK Libraries and the Graduate School, are working collectively to break new ground on ways to advance the Commonwealth.

This spring, UKNow is highlighting the 2024-25 IMPACT Award projects and the faculty who are leading them. Today, we learn more about the project titled “The University of Kentucky Leadership Development Collaborative: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Leadership Development.”

Through this project, the Lewis Honors College (LHC), in partnership with the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, proposes to leverage and expand upon existing programs in their respective units to intentionally cultivate leadership development of undergraduate students to be citizen and civic leaders. The project includes establishing a broad network for an institution-wide collaboration, the Leadership Development Collaborative (LDC), to coordinate other efforts underway and explore a transdisciplinary approach to leadership development for UK students.

The team is led by Laura Bryan, Ph.D., director of Honors Leadership Initiatives in the LHC, along with team members Cory Curl, Ph.D., director of undergraduate studies in the Martin School; Sally Foster, assistant dean of student engagement in the LHC; Angelica Prekopa, philanthropy director in the LHC; and Maura Glascock, LHC project manager.

UKNow recently sat down with Bryan to learn more about the project. You can read more in the Q&A session below.

How has the IMPACT award inspired innovation at UK with your research?

This specific project focuses on student learning outcomes regarding development of leadership. This three-year project inspires ingenuity and advances a culture of innovation in research, teaching and service by developing an institution-wide collaborative of academic colleges and programs to further build efforts that develop leaders. We are working together to foster a working and learning environment where we can flourish to lead a transdisciplinary approach to leadership development across the institution. This project is building upon strengths in research and creative work and teaching to cultivate leaders who are prepared to address a broad range of local, national and global challenges.

How did you decide on this particular topic or research area?

We believe that universities must act now through classes and programs to instill strong leadership with character virtues of compassion, honesty, humility, integrity and kindness because these virtues will allow the next generation of citizens to bridge their divides in ways that find common ground for the common good. Higher education institutions need exemplars of transdisciplinary programs and courses that educate students on leadership.

In addition to the leadership initiatives of the LHC and the Martin School, numerous efforts that focus on leadership development exist across campus. Here are some examples: the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment (CAFE) houses the Community and Leadership Development program. The College of Education is home to the Educational Leadership Studies academic department and partners with the Martin-Gatton CAFE on offering an undergraduate leadership studies certificate. The College of Public Health offers a clinical leadership management degree, and one-off courses, like EGR 490 (engineering leadership), are found scattered around UK as well. The Office for Student Success provides workshops for student leaders and both the Chellgren Center and the Gaines Center for the Humanities cultivate student excellence.

There are three gaps with these opportunities that we are addressing with this IMPACT project. One is that these existing efforts are mostly “siloed” and thus do not operate cohesively for the benefit of students across campus. Because of little or no coordination, the second gap is that these opportunities are often restricted to specific student cohorts, limiting the capacity of this type of education for any undergraduate student. The third gap is that due to little collaboration, an intentional and strategic effort for a transdisciplinary approach to student leadership development across UK does not exist.

Additionally, Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education recently released the Kentucky Graduate Profile, which features 10 essential skills for success in the workforce and in life. Among these skills are adaptability and leadership: the ability to excel in varied environments and motivate teams toward shared goals.

What positive impact will your research have on Kentucky and beyond?

The UK LDC will advance UK’s mission and strategic plan by preparing future leaders to have an impact on the economic development, human well-being and quality of life within Kentucky and beyond. This project aligns with UK’s core values and is guided by the principles and key objectives outlined in UK’s Strategic Plan with the priority of putting students first. Our work will prepare students for their success by expanding on the existing foundation of focused, purpose-driven curricular and co/extra-curricular experiences. We expect to enhance student leadership development across the campus as a result of the LDC.

Through this collaborative, we will achieve three project goals:

• An innovative model of an interdisciplinary approach to leadership development by forming a strategic partnership between the LHC and the Martin School. With a shared commitment to the holistic and integrous growth of their students as leaders to impact their communities (i.e., citizen and civic leaders), these units are natural partners to begin this work. The LHC fosters the development of students to become well-rounded and intellectually curious lifelong learners and the Martin School focuses on training public servants. Currently, their programs occur in silos without consideration of how these programs could be leveraged to create a more comprehensive integrated program for enhancing student leadership.
• The LDC, a robust collaboration of university partners that focus on leadership development of students.
• Recommendations and a strategy for a broad transdisciplinary institution-wide approach to cultivate student leaders across campus resulting in wider institutional impact.

What comes next for your research?

To date, LHC and Martin School partnered to develop an innovative model of an interdisciplinary approach to leadership development, the Rising Leaders Education Program (RLEP). Also during this year, the Lewis Honors College held its second annual Leadership Conference for students, which was expanded as a result of this IMPACT grant.

Additionally, a Leadership Advisory Council was formed to provide feedback for the RLEP, to plan a faculty/staff seminar, and to build the LDC. Current members include the IMPACT team and the following:

• Trey Conatser, Ph.D., Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT)
• Jill Abney, Ph.D., CELT
• Bryan Hains, Ph.D., professor, Community and Leadership Development, Martin-Gatton CAFE
• Kristina Hains, Ph.D., associate professor and program chair of undergraduate certificate in leadership studies, College of Education
• Hector Martinez, Ph.D., lecturer, Department of Management, Gatton College of Business and Economics
• Libby Langlois, associate director, major campus programming, Student Organizations and Activities, Office for Student Success
• Ranym Nenneh, personal development counselor, LHC Center for Personal Development
• Erin Newell, academic coordinator, Martin School (previously supported the Honors Rising Leaders program)

Recently on April 28, in partnership with the UK Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) and the Martin School, the Leadership Advisory Council of this LHC Provost IMPACT Award hosted an interactive panel of experts focusing on four models for student leadership development at UK. More than 70 participants attended. Each year we will host a faculty and staff seminar for professional development on relevant topics.

For next year, we will launch the RLEP, and the LAC will invite faculty and staff from across campus to join the LDC to advance the impact of UK on preparing future leaders. As members, we will share resources, ideas and strategies about approaches for developing student leaders.  We will work together over the next two years to create recommendations for enhancing and expanding student leadership development for a wider institutional impact. We will also host and scale up the student-led annual Honors Leadership Conference for all UK students.

If you are interested in learning more about the LDC or want to be invited to the first gathering, please provide your contact information here: https://uky.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4N5TUtcQ7MOE3Vc.