On Saturday, October 2, current students, parents, and recent alumni came together for the Honors College Alumni Panel. This is an annual event where the Honors College community invites recent alumni back to talk about their experiences in the postgraduate world, reflect on how their Honors College experience impacted their college career, offer advice to current students and parents, and reunite with faculty mentors.
Watch the 2015 Honors College Alumni Panel here.
This year seven recent Honors College graduates from seven different majors and four different colleges participated in the panel. It included:
- Justin Dao ’14, an electrical engineering major who is now pursuing a master’s degree at UVM.
- Tom Campbell 13, a philosophy major who worked at Hope Works in Burlington until this past summer, and who is now pursuing law school at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Julia Frankel ’13, an English major, now working as an instructional designer for the Lifespan hospital system in Providence, Rhode Island.
- Haylley Johnson ’11, a double English and Economics major who is now working as an enterprise supply planner for Global Foundries in Essex Junction, Vt.
- Joseph Romano ’14, a molecular genetics major who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Infomatics at Columbia University.
- Tram Tran ’13, a biochemistry major who is now a second year medical student at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
- Benjamin Vaughan ’15, a business major who graduated this past spring, is now a business development analyst at Books 4 Equality, and is a current graduate student in UVM’s Master’s In Accountancy program.
The panel was moderated by Associate Dean Peter VonDoepp. The audience, which was composed mostly of first year students and parents, had questions that ranged from how the panelists found friends at UVM to how they found a way to persevere through the rigors of the Honors College curriculum. The answers varied widely; the panelists all had their own stories of their own journey through UVM, and how they found their way to what they are doing now.
Campbell said his thesis inspired him to pursue a law degree and pursue a career in the public sector. Dao said the skills he gained through working on a thesis prepared him for the rigors of research in graduate school, and Romano noted it also enabled him to stand out as a highly qualified candidate for top-tier Ph.D. programs.
Tran noted that her work on an Honors thesis project enabled her to stand out in medical school applications, and her experience in UVM’s Premedical Enhancement Program (PEP) prepared her for the rigors of day-to-day life as a medical student. Johnson reflected that her work in both English and economics enabled her to firmly grasp the power of narratives and numerical data, as well as how the two work together in a fast-paced business environment. Frankel advised students to seek out mentors in the Honors College, seek out help when they feel they get in over their head, and stick with the rigors of the program; as she saw it, it was a challenging but well worthwhile experience that enabled her to develop relationships with fellow students and faculty that she now counts among her friends. And Vaughan advised students to find time for themselves, to have fun, to explore their own ideas, because it could turn into something they want to focus on during their college career as well as after it.
Most of all, they advised students to stay active, find a way to connect with each other, and find a way to connect with their professors. Through that they would find good opportunities and great people that would enable them to make the most of their college career.