Issuu

DIRECTOR

DR. LEE ANN WESTMAN

ASSISTANT DEAN

GABRIEL O. MOLINA, MPA

ASSISTANT DEAN

KRISTA WEHLEN

ASSISTANT DEAN

BRIAN K. EVERETT, MPA, PHD-ABD

This Newsletter was produced by Assistant Dean Everett with contributions by Dr. Lee Ann Westman, Assistant Dean Wehlen, and Assistant Dean Molina

CAMDEN.RUTGERS.EDU/HONORS-COLLEGE

Honoring the First-Year Experience

Our Director, Dr. Lee Ann Westman, has published a profile of our Honors College, highlighting the First Year Forum course.

Student Spotlights

Learn about the accomplishments of 3 Honors College students during this season of celebration.

Busy Hands

In a world filled with distractions, we brought insights back from a national conference to launch a crotchet group - and it’s working.

Preparing for Fall 2026

The Honors College already expects a full incoming freshman cohort for the next academic year.

From Seminars to Research

The Honors College Faculty Fellows have led seminars which empower students to see their work as professional research proposals

IMPACT Night & Excitement Ahead

Congratulations to the 2026 graduating class of RutgersCamden Honors College alumni!

The Honors College First - Year Forum

By Dr. Lee Ann Westman Director of The Honors College

The Rutgers-Camden Honors College First-Year Forum focuses specifically on Camden, NJ and its strengths, challenges, and opportunities. Students read about the history of Camden and learn from guest lecturers who visit the course to talk about their work. Guest lecturers address topics such as food insecurity, inequities in STEM education, violence de-escalation in policing, hostile architecture, health care disparities, work and transportation inequities, housing and gentrification, the representative of Camden in the media, and restorative justice.

Students spend time in the community as well with walks and bus rides around Camden with Urban Promise and the Department of Environmental Protection, visits to local cultural centers such as Erik James Montgomery’s studio, eateries such as Nuanced Café, as well as the mayor ’ s “Camden Strong” clean-up initiatives.

The students in the First-Year Forum also complete a robust service-learning requirement. At the beginning of the semester, 7-8 community organizations visit class and share their work and objectives. These community partners include “Raise the Bar,” an organization that supports Camden families of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and “The Free Books Project” which aims to provide free books via pop-up mobile libraries throughout Camden, two after-school programs run by Rutgers-Camden DICE office (IGNITE and Rutgers RARA), a period poverty project, a clothing drive in partnership with St Paul’s Episcopal church, and a weekly lunch service for homeless and food insecure folks at St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Students select a project that meets their interests and spend the semester working together with these organizations. Students not only participate in these high-impact service-learning activities, but they also reflect on them via papers and group presentations, grapple with difficult questions, and learn about their own strengths and capabilities. Many Honors College students continue working on their projects even after the semester ends.

Photo: Crotched final products from the First Year Forum

The First-Year Forum is a high-impact learning community with measurable outcomes, including building community and providing means for students to link their academic work with active interaction with each other and faculty. The course creates a sense of common purpose and community among first-year Honors College students and increases student retention and academic achievement, student involvement and motivation, and enhances student intellectual development.

Recently, Dr. Westman introduced an additional class project to the First-Year Forum. Dr. Westman had been searching for a class project that students in the First Year Forum could do together (in addition to dividing into smaller groups to complete their engaged civic learning projects) and she found one while attending a session at the November 2025 National Collegiate Honors College conference in San Diego. Robert Welch, an Honors College academic advisor at University of South Dakota, led a session entitled, “Learning To Fail: The Use of Knitting in the Honors Classroom.” In his syllabus, Welch explains the knitting requirement to his students as follows:

Research shows that students, especially high achieving ones, benefit from tactile creative work. Reading patterns helps people develop their coding and math skills. Manual dexterity is vital in the medical fields. And possessing a quiet, meditative skill reaps benefits across a lifetime. It is also a way to be more comfortable with failure and success because it will take some practice for you to master this skill. And finally, it is a class group project. We will learn together!

Dr. Westman added this requirement to the First-Year Forum students with instructions to make 3 items (little crochet animals, blankets, scarves, hats) to donate to Ronald McDonald house or to St Paul's Episcopal Church which serves food weekly to homeless and food-insecure folks or even to hang on a local fence in Camden for people who are cold. To facilitate the project, Dr. Westman recruited 8 Honors College students who already crochet to be “crochet coaches.” The 8 students visit class to supply crochet tutoring and set up weekly "crochet drop in" sessions in the Honors College lounge.

This project is gaining momentum! A Rutgers-Camden fraternity reached out to us about their own crochet project and the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity asked us to collaborate with their Warm-Up America project. The 8 crochet coaches have been so effective in teaching and leading this project that Dr. Westman invited them to be part of a proposal to the upcoming National Collegiate Honors College conference to share their work and insights.

Other institutions and organizations have noticed the value of Rutgers-Camden’s Honors College First Year Forum as well. In November 2024, Dr. Westman gave a presentation about the course at the National Collegiate Honors Council conference in Chicago and was subsequently invited to write a profile of the Rutgers-Camden First Year Forum a monograph entitled Honoring the First-Year Experience (2025). This profile shares details about the First-Year Forum as a high-impact course for incoming Honors College students, and models how other institutions may adopt engaged civic learning in their own Honors College first year courses.

HONORS COLLEGE STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS

Graduating Senior Sophia Laporta has been admitted to the University of Pennsylvania’s PhD Program for Materials Science and Engineering while receiving the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program award. She looks forward to returning to Dr. Fakhraai’s research lab, where she previously worked as a visiting REU scholar.

Speaking of Peer Mentors, we want to congratulate Nikitha Jeyaprakash, Srijan Makkena, Laiba Mehmood, Olivia Nunes, and Alexis Sanchez for earning the Honors College Peer Mentor digital badge! These 5 students have helped first-year Honors College students adjust to university life, and they are the first to earn this microcredential. We look forward to launching our Honors 101 and Email Etiquette badges this summer as part of an enhanced onboarding experience.

Rising senior Don Frenzel has led the volunteer student organization Cooking for Camden through expansive growth. To further the success of the organization and to support the work in the Camden community, Don has voluntarily stepped down from his role as president before he graduates, so that he can mentor the next group of leaders before he moves on from Rutgers-Camden.

Many students who have participated routinely in the Cooking for Camden organization have also sought to become Peer Mentors within the Honors College.

HONORS COLLEGE FACULTY PARTNERSHIPS

Afternoon

Events

Throughout each academic year, the Honors College partners with faculty across Rutgers-Camden to host Honors Events. These are typically lead by faculty or industry leaders, based on topics related to our annual theme. Each semester, Honors College students must attend at least 1 Honors Event.

Above, Dr. Michael Boyle and Dr. Woj Wolfe from the Political Science Department lead a timely talk called “Drone Diplomacy.” Early in 2026, our colleagues co-published an article in the European Journal of International Security titled, “Diplomatic Drones? How states exploit drone exports for leverage” and their talk reviewed their scholarship in relation to evolving global events. Since then, Dr. Boyle has published again, this time in the Security Studies journal with an article titled, “How Tactical and Operational Drones Transform Ground Combat.” We thank both of our School of Arts and Sciences colleagues for sharing their time and expertise with Honors College students!

In the Spring of 2026, Dr. Silvia Perez-Cortes taught an Honors Seminar titled, “(De)Humanizing the Other: Multilingualism and Linguistic Minorities in the United States.” As a capstone assignment, students presented research posters based on their individual research topics while faculty and staff asked questions about their work and offered suggestions for publications. We hope many of these projects find their way to SPARK! in 2027.

PREPARING FOR FALL 2026

The Honors College welcomed over 250 people to our breakout session during Admitted Students Day.

Current Honors College students shared their experiences with prospective students and their families, shook their hands, and answered questions after the main program had finished. Prospective students were able to confirm their participation in the Honors College with assistant deans Wehlen and Everett.

Given the success of this event and the growing interest in pursuing the Honors College, we are now operating on a waitlist due to reaching capacity for our 2026-2027 first year cohort.

We are also thrilled to report that after reviewing all non-graduating and returning students for the Fall 2026 semester, more than 90% of eligible students registered for Fall classes prior to the end of Spring classes. A key feature to our success with ensuring course registration and retention has been our newly implemented early registration program. All Honors College students can register for courses a few days earlier, leaving more time to meet with academic advisors.

IMPACT Night 2026

Part of the curricular requirements to graduate from the Honors College is to participate in IMPACT Night. As a bookend to IMPACT Day, students present on what has been the most impactful experience during their undergraduate careers at Rutgers-Camden. Some students choose to present undergraduate research projects, art portfolios, or even films, while others present stories of their growth as they prepare to cross the graduation stage.

Throughout the evening, University leaders, faculty, parents, and guests tour the many posters and displays. Soft music plays while refreshments and snacks are served in advance of IMPACT Night’s main spectacle.

IMPACT Night 2026

Students, friends, families, and guests were congratulated during the second half of IMPACT Night 2026 by Dr. Lee Ann Westman and Provost Sandra Richtermeyer. Attendees then heard from keynote speaker Assemblyman Anthony Angelozzi, who also is a graduate of the Rutgers-Camden Honors College.

All three speakers invoked excitment for our 2026 graduates as they prepare for their next steps. Many graduating students will pursue employment, graduate studies, medical school, and law school. All of them, though, become Rutgers University alumni - a determined and evergrowing body of professionals, more than 617,000 strong. Following the assemblyman’s speech, each graduating Honors College student announced their own names and majors, and finally received their golden Honors College stole.

Students can download professional photos from the event at this link. We thank Honors College alumna Mady Wehlen for her photography expertise!