Beer Bottles, Shipwrecks, and Ghosts: Building a Sense of Community and Belonging through Campus Lore
November, 13 2026
National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) 60th Annual Conference, Hilton New Orleans Riverside, New Orleans, Louisiana
Offering innovative interdisciplinary honors classes that not only familiarize students with the identity of the organization but also engage them with this identity by incorporating them into the creation of the institution’s traditions helps honors students build a stronger sense of community and belonging with the institution. The Clarke Honors College at Salisbury University (SU) offers a “Campus Legends and Mysteries” class, which prompts honors students to create their original campus legends based on the robust research they conduct using primary and secondary sources. The comments in the end-of-semester evaluations and the interviews given by the students for SU’s magazine The Sea Gull demonstrate that the class helped them develop a stronger and more personal bond with the institution by giving them the opportunity to leave a permanent trace on SU’s campus lore. These findings suggest that honors programs and colleges can benefit from offering courses modeled after the “Campus Legends and Mysteries” class not only in terms of helping students develop transferrable skills and build a more meaningful bond with the institution, but also in terms of potentially improving the honors students’ institutional retention rates and paving a path toward a more engaged alumni status.
Elevating Excellence: Career-Ready Honors Ambassadors in Action
June, 3 2026
SUCCESS: Soaring to Enrollment Success, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD
Salisbury University’s Glenda Chatham and Robert G. Clarke Honors College puts high-achieving students in an environment that challenges them and encourages their success. Honors Student Ambassadors are exemplary students in the Clarke Honors College who serve as liaisons to incoming students, mentors to first year undergraduates, and serve as peer leaders. Leadership experiences are embedded implicitly in their experience.
In partnership with Career Services at Salisbury University, the Honors Student Ambassador program is getting a refresh for the 2026-2027 academic year. Focusing on skill building, communication, and translating content learned in classes and the Honors College to career ready competencies, Honors Student Ambassadors will invest in hands on, activity-based skill building and explicitly develop their leadership competencies.
Through this presentation, learn about the Honors College at Salisbury University, Career Services, and the intersection of career readiness into a student pathway at SU.
AI, Give Me a Topic: Implementing a Chatbot in HONR 111
April, 24 2026
Spring 2026 Generative AI Virtual Showcase, Virtual
Choosing a viable research topic is a common barrier for first‑year students. This session describes the use of a constrained chatbot to support topic exploration while strengthening critical evaluation. Through iterative redesign, the chatbot shifted from idea generator to critical coach. Participants will learn how prompt design, librarian collaboration, and intentional constraints can help AI scaffold inquiry without narrowing student thinking.
