Three students from the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center assembled at City Hall in Columbia today (Monday, January 5th, 2026).
Columbia’s own Trey Stephens was joined by Elizabethtown’s Grant Avis and Louisville’s Hannah Cease for a tour around the City of Columbia.
The McConnell Center is a non-partisan educational institution that seeks to identify, recruit and nurture Kentucky’s next generation of great leaders.
Core principles of the center are leadership, scholarship, and service.
The three students mentioned above are McConnell Scholars which is a four year program at UofL where students get enhanced academic experiences outside of the traditional classroom under the direction of Gary L. Gregg, PhD.
Programming focuses on the foundations of leadership and political and social thought in America.
General opportunities include participating in Socratic-style seminars with UofL faculty and nationally-recognized experts, authors, and leaders on a variety of topics related to American social and political thought.
Recent examples include discussions on dystopian literature, the women’s suffrage movement, “America’s British Tradition,” and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist debates at the American founding.
This was the first time in Columbia for Cease and Avis, who met with Mayor Pamela Hoots and Chief Evan Burton to learn more about the operation of local government and Columbia specifically.
After meeting with local leaders, they embarked on a tour of Columbia to learn more about the blossoming community and its history.
(Trey Stephens, Assistant to the Mayor – City of Columbia)