Honors Day 2025

CHARLOTTE ROCKWELL
PHOTOGRAPHER

GRACE MAIN
STAFF WRITER

4/7/2025

Alma College’s annual Honors Day was held on Thursday, April 3 this year. Honors Day is a day for students across all areas of studies to come together and present their research, writing, artwork and other projects they have worked on through the duration of the year. 

For the past 29 years, Alma College has selected a day toward the end of the winter semester to dedicate to student work. Classes are cancelled so that students are able to both present and watch their peers on Honors Day.  

“I think it’s a great opportunity for people to show off the work that they’ve done either in classes or through research, and they get to share it with friends and maybe other faculty members who wouldn’t see it otherwise,” said Morgan Fonley, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science and Honors Day Coordinator. 

Honors Day is an integral part of the liberal arts education that Alma provides, and students are able to present on topics either within or outside of their chosen major.  

“I think it’s wonderful for liberal arts because sometimes you’ll find that someone who has a talent for one thing is also talented in an entirely different area. Seeing that come together really exhibits a liberal arts education,” said Fonley. 

There was a large turnout for the presentations, which were divided into six sessions throughout the day. In all, there were approximately 78 presentations.  

Many professors gave assignments or extra credit to students who attended these presentations. In addition, students could win gift cards to Starbucks, Meijer, Alma Brewing Company, Cancun, Ballyhoo or the Alma College Bookstore if they attended these events. 

“My Environmental Science professor gave extra credit if we did a reflection on three or more presentations. I learned how hardworking Alma students are and how passionate they can be about their own subjects,” said Tessa Aiello (‘28). 

In fact, there were so many students, faculty and supporters to watch that some presentations had to be moved to larger rooms. 

“Three of the sessions had to switch rooms to a bigger room. We chose the rooms for convenience and accessibility but some of the other rooms have larger seating capacities, so switching to a bigger room is a wonderful problem to have. Some of the sessions from the counts that I have, had 80 up to 100 people, which is just a wonderful turnout,” said Fonley.  

After the presentations, the day concluded with the Barlow Academic Honors Celebration dinner at the Wright Leppien Opera House, where the Kapp Honors Day Prizes were presented.  

“Whenever a student submits an abstract, the professor who approves that abstract can choose to nominate them for the Kapp Prize. There are three prizes, one for each division: […] Arts and Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences,” said Fonley. 

There are faculty members from the subjects in the different divisions who watch each nominated presentation and come together afterwards to determine the prize winners. 

The Kapp Prize winner for the Natural Sciences division was Jenna Holzinger (‘25), whose study was titled “Softball Performance and the Menstrual Cycle.” 

The winner for the Social Sciences division was Abby Haag (’25), whose study was titled “The Gendered Echo Chamber”: Partisan Media and the Perpetuation of Misogyny”.

The winner of the Arts and Humanities division was Kay Keller (’26), whose study was titled “Survival of the Fair Folk: How Land Memory and Christian Missionary Work Kept pre-Christian Ireland Alive”.