Honors College student wins prestigious national award

Ava Michl was awarded first place in the Social and Behavioral Sciences category at the National Collegiate Honors Council Awards ceremony. Ava Michl, a senior majoring in neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was awarded first place in the Social and Behavioral Sciences category at the 54th annual conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council Awards ceremony. The event was held in New Orleans on Saturday, Nov. 9. Michl is in the UAB Honors College’s University Honors Program.

Michl, from Birmingham, Alabama, worked closely with her faculty research mentor, Burel Goodin, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Psychology, to create her winning poster, titled “Temporal Summation of Mechanical Pain Prospectively Predicts Movement-Evoked Pain in a Sample of Individuals with Chronic Low Back Pain.” The SBS category was the largest poster category, with 60 posters.

Michael Sloane, Ph.D., director of the Honors College’s University Honors Program and associate professor in the Department of Psychology, presided over the poster sessions during the conference. The posters were judged by faculty honors directors and deans throughout the United States.  

Representatives from the UAB Honors College participated in the conference, sharing their expertise in Honors Education:

• Amy Atkisson, director of Honors Advising and Retention; Mellissa Taylor, former assistant director of Honors Advising and Retention; Kamina Perdue and Rebecca Freeman, both Honors Counselors, provided an informative session on innovative practices in retention and engagement. Each discussed ways to increase involvement, ownership and a sense of community in an expanding Honors College. 
• Rusty Rushton, Ph.D., associate director, UAB University Honors Program, served as chair of the newsletter committee and presided over the four awards for print and digital newsletters.
• Donna Andrews, program manager, UAB University Honors Program, and inaugural recipient of the Honors Administrative Staff Award, presided over the National Collegiate Honors Council Awards Ceremony. 

During the four-day conference, the National Collegiate Honors Council serves as the professional organization for all honors programs and colleges across the United States. More than 900 member institutions are hosted. The awards ceremony is the keynote session that concludes the conference.