Photo: Meghan Kenney

In early November, four Elizabethtown College students attended the 2018 National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) conference.

Etown students have attended the conference in the past, but this was the first year students participated as presenters.

Senior Benjamin Erickson, sophomore Etownian staff writer Meghan Kenney, sophomore Etownian Assistant Features Editor Aprille Mohn and sophomore Caitlin Rossiter joined Director of Student Transition Programs and Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships Jean-Paul Benowitz on the trip.

“NCHC was so impressed with us that we did two presentations,” Benowitz said with a laugh.

The annual conference is held in a different city every year. This year, students in honors programs at colleges and universities all over the U.S. convened in Boston.

“Boston’s culture is busy and loud, but it’s also quiet. There are lots of old buildings as well as skyscrapers,” Rossiter said.

“There are lots of friendly people, but it’s also easy to find quiet spots like old bookshops.”

Rossiter discovered this culture through a “City as Text” exercise in which groups of students explored different parts of Boston, observing different aspects of the city and immersing themselves in the culture. Her group, which consisted of herself and students from other schools, were assigned Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, while Erickson’s group visited Boston’s Chinatown.

The students were encouraged to use their senses to observe the city and to talk to strangers. The groups reconvened at the end of the day, and one student from each group was chosen to describe each section of Boston to the rest of the students.

“Some students had been to Boston before, but they still found it fascinating and even liberating to explore a city they thought they knew,” Benowitz said.

Later in the conference, the Etown students presented on how the College uses the City as Text pedagogy in classes; students explore Elizabethtown in two of Benowitz’s classes. The students participated in a poster presentation before speaking on a panel.

Benowitz and the students will present their work at the Northeast Regional Honors Council conference in Baltimore in April.

Rossiter said she and the other students have ideas for how to improve on their posters and presentations.

One such improvement is printing the posters with holes at the top. Each student brought their own poster to the Boston conference, but the group was only given one stand.

The students improvised by hanging the posters up together and flipping between them as if they were pages of a giant notepad.

During the panel discussion, the students sat in a circle and used their laptops to present because there was no projection equipment.

“It was interesting that mistakes actually helped us find better ways to present,” Rossiter said.

Benowitz plans to begin some of his courses, particularly courses in which he teaches first-year students, with a City as Text activity from now on.

He also plans to incorporate such activities into the first-year fall orientation programs in the upcoming academic years.

The students have ideas for improvements to the College’s Honors Council and to the Honors Program as a whole.