Honors Students Attend NCHC in the Windy City
Six Honors Students, along with Program Manager Lisa Cavallaro and Program Director Kerry Johnson, ventured to Chicago, IL to attend the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) Conference this past November. The students who attended were senior Kate Culverhouse; juniors Megan Carignan, Joe Fisher, and Molly Malinowski; and sophomores Michael Santoro and Alison Tobin. While the students were able to venture out into the city a bit for the “City as Text” portion of the conference, they spent most of their time attending various sessions gathering innovative ideas to help improve the Honors Program at Merrimack College.
The students also contributed to the conference by giving their own presentations. Representatives from Honors Programs and Colleges around the country were intrigued by what the students presented. Joe Fisher, Kate Culverhouse, and Molly Malinowski presented “Managing the Cubs and the Bears; The Importance of Peer Mentors for First-Year Students.” They discussed the Honors Peer Mentor Program at Merrimack and all of the aspects that illustrate why it is successful and useful. Lisa Cavallaro and Megan Carignan, along with help from Social Media Coordinators Alison Tobin and Michael Santoro, presented “Branding an Honors Program through Intentional Marketing.” Their focus was on developing an internal Public Relations strategy along with marketing led by students to effectively brand, promote, and establish the Honors Program on campus.
Additionally, Megan Carignan and Alison Tobin accepted the award for 2nd place in the category of print newsletters at the award ceremony at the conference. This award also allowed Megan Carignan to speak at the session on “What Makes an Award Winning Newsletter.”
Overall the honors students and faculty were blown away by the windy city. Carignan says, “Going to the NCHC conference sparked new ideas for the Merrimack Honors Program, and I look forward to the growth of the Program in the next year.” They had so many great experiences and came up with new ideas for our own Honors Program that they plan to implement.