Dr. Jeffrey Weidenhamer, Director of the AU Academic Honors Program, and students attended the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Dr. Weidenhamer and seniors, Maria Kern and Cillian Donahue, attended the National Collegiate Honors Council conference held in New Orleans. The theme of the 54th annual NCHC conference was Disrupting Education: Honors, Creativity, and Innovation. Presentations focused on the innovation or “creativity crisis” in faculty pedagogy and student experiences and how honors programs can provide solutions.

Cillian Donahue presented her research project titled "Using Passive Sampling as a Method for Pesticide Analysis." Cillian is a double major is Forensic Biology and Toxicology. Cillian has been investigating a new method using silicone tubing to absorb pesticides from sediment for her Honors Capstone project. She is supervised by Dr. Weidenhamer and Dr. Andrew Trimble (Toxicology). One of the judges for her poster presentation was Chemistry and Environmental Science alumnus Dr. Marc Klingshirn, now Associate Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Cillian writes, “Presenting my research allowed me to get feedback from other Honors Program Directors, which will be useful for me while presenting my research at other events in the upcoming year. In addition, I was able to see other projects that Honors Students around the country are working on. I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend this conference, and I made some wonderful memories!” Maria adds that “Attending the 2019 NCHC Conference in New Orleans was a great experience. I loved being able to explore a new city while seeing new research being done by fellow honors students around the country.”


As part of the conference, Cillian, Maria and Dr. Weidenhamer had the opportunity to explore Royal Street as part of the NCHC session on “City as Text”. Cillian and Maria also had the opportunity to check out a couple of museums related to their scientific interests – the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Death, which has memorabilia related to famous crimes among other forensic-related topics.