Columbia College is well known for quality student research as well as faculty and students working together in the process of scholarly inquiry. Dr. Jason Munsell, associate professor of communication, and Kim Alpaugh, a May 2010 Columbia College graduate with a BA in Communication, recently co-authored an article on the discourse of President Obama called, “Debating Gender in Orangeburg, South Carolina: Barack Obama and an Androgynous Political Style.” The work grew out of an independent study on Gender and Political Communication. The article was published in the peer-reviewed regional journal, the Carolinas Communication Annual. The journal has a 37% acceptance rate. In the essay, Munsell and Alpaugh explore the discourse of Barack Obama by focusing on his responses to questions during the 2007 Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate in Orangeburg, South Carolina. While many studies of Obama have focused on issues of race, a critical interest in gender funds their project. They argue that Obama supplied what Munsell and Alpaugh call an androgynous political style and that such an evolving political style helped Obama effectively move beyond the stereotypes of Black masculinity, the general limits of normative White masculinity, and perhaps the limits of monoscopic speaking and thinking generally. However, while such a brand of discourse was perhaps strategic during the presidential campaign, Munsell and Alpaugh suggest that the efficacy of a political style that is somewhat androgynous, inclusive, dialectical, and/or reconciliatory doesn’t always sell quite as well during the process of governing.