For Honors Program student Noah Fansler, the highlight of the Great Plains Honors Council Conference in March was not winning the Humanities poster competition or helping UMKC bring home the trivia contest trophy.

“The highlight was hearing how interested people were in my research,” said Noah, whose presentation addressed a famous artwork at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. “I presented on Friday, and on Saturday, I had several people tell me that my research was thought provoking. Creating a project that encouraged discussion was so rewarding because it made my research feel meaningful.”

Noah was one of eight UMKC Honors students and two advisors who traveled 1,000 miles in three days to attend the conference at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. More than 300 students from four states participated in the annual event, which featured poster and oral presentations on topics from diverse disciplines.

Honors Program student Jessica Kim won first place in the STEM poster competition for her research on a dynamic circadian complex.

“I was able to present my research in front of new faces and reaffirmed it is relevant and important. Furthermore, I loved seeing Wichita Falls and eating at Braum’s for the first time!” Jess said.

Noah and Jess helped UMKC win two of the six poster awards of the conference; each student also received $100 as a prize.

The other UMKC participants were Symone Franks, Chinecherem Ihenacho, Ebele Mgbemena, Diana Perez, Theo Raitzer, and Elliott Smith. Margo Gamache, Honors Program Director of Student Services, and Dr. Henrietta Rix Wood, Honors Program Teaching Professor, organized and chaperoned the trip funded by the Honors Program.

Elliott shared his research on the history and current impact of KCUR, the Kansas City public radio station based at UMKC. “My favorite part of the GPHC was interacting with students from other colleges and universities. Learning about the work they do in their communities and seeing how involved they were was very inspiring. We were even able to team up with some students from Texas and win the conference’s trivia challenge!” he said.

The conference was the first time these Honors students had presented their scholarship to a university audience.

“The Great Plains Honors Conference introduced me to what an academic career in my field looks like,” said Ebele, who talked about how three UMKC conservatory professors and composers think of their work. “I enjoyed preparing for the presentation, sharing my research, and discussing the material with my fellow presenters. It was such a positive learning experience, and I look forward to participating in more academic conferences in the future.”

For the first time in more than a decade, UMKC engineering students designed and constructed a unique water vessel for the annual Concrete Canoe Competition sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Led by Honors senior Sean Purdue, a civil engineering major, the UMKC team won its regional competition, hosted by Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, in April.

“The idea of making a canoe out of concrete is absurd, but that absurdity is what makes it so fun. You have to put your head together with your team and make a boat out of a really unsuitable material, so you’re forced to think outside of the box,” Sean said.

Sean is president of the UMKC student chapter of ASCE and was captain and project manager of the UMKC canoe team of fifteen students. He says the team tried to compensate for its lack of recent experience in the competition by keeping things simple and communicating effectively.

Of course, it is not simple to make and race a concrete canoe, but enabling students to test their skills in concrete mix designs and project management is the goal of the competition that began in 1988 and is known as the “America’s Cup of Civil Engineering.”

Sean said there were plenty of challenges. “Lack of experience made duration and cost estimating nearly impossible. I frequently underestimated how long construction tasks would take, which meant a lot of last-minute scrambling to finish things. Unifying the writing of the technical report was also a challenge, since multiple people contributed to it. We also did not do a good job with quality control (ensuring that construction matches design). Managing members who are busy with school, work, and other extracurriculars was challenging as well.”

Bad weather prevented the UMKC team from racing its canoe at the regional competition, where it took first place for the “Blue Phoenix,” which is 238 inches long, 26 inches wide, 15 inches deep, and weighed 395 pounds. Despite the win, the UMKC team did not participate in the national Concrete Canoe competition because it did not meet other ASCE requirements unrelated to the canoe project.

Sean aims to help the UMKC team repeat its regional win and qualify for the national competition next year.

Dr. John T. Kevern, chairperson of the UMKC Department of Civil & Mechanical Engineering and faculty advisor to the Concrete Canoe team, praised Sean’s leadership on the project.

“UMKC hasn’t had a concrete canoe since the mid-2000’s and as such, had no institutional knowledge for the Blue Phoenix. Sean successfully organized all aspects of the team from scratch—canoe design, mold construction, concrete design, paddling, report writing, presentations, and especially fund raising. Under normal circumstances this is a significant bit of extra work, but to do it without anyone to ask, ‘What did you do last time?’ is huge, plus they won the regional competition. It’s safe to say that without Sean’s leadership it would have been a different outcome,” Dr. Kevern said.

The garden on the rooftop terrace of the UMKC Student Union looked more like a desert than an oasis for years.

Today, the garden blooms again, thanks to a campaign led by eight Honors students in Spring 2022. The students formed a new organization, the UMKC Gardening Club, as part of their project for an Honors class, Civic and Urban Engagement H202: Social Action. This class asks students to identify a social problem and take action to solve that problem in one semester.

For their social action campaign, Sonya Ahmad, Ashley Appleberry, Amelia Beharry, Jay Cravens, Sudhiksha Kumar, Hannah Leyva, Cassandra Ludwig, and Madi Sweeney focused on a campus garden that was abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic. They collaborated to get permission and supplies to revitalize the space and organized a planting party on April 29.

For more information about the UMKC Gardening Club, go to Instagram @umkcgardeningclub