MMC Salutes Scholarship, Community, and Tradition at Honors Day 2026
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MMC recognized exceptional student achievement at its 2026 Honors Day Colloquium, celebrating the scholarship, creativity, and intellectual curiosity that have defined the College.
Honors Day highlights select research papers and creative and scientific projects produced at MMC’s 71st Street campus and in its college programs at the Bedford Hills and Taconic correctional facilities for women in Bedford Hills, New York. The event also includes the induction of students into honor societies and the presentation of senior and departmental academic awards. It is sponsored by the Alpha Chi Honor Society and the Academic Honors Committee.
Already one of the most anticipated days of the academic year, this spring’s celebration, held on April 21, carried added significance as the College nears completion of its merger with Northeastern University. In a welcome letter included in the event program, Academic Honors Committee members—professors Paul Smith, Morgan Cline, Brandon Logan, and Daniel Sandler—noted that MMC had been “a sanctuary for curiosity, a catalyst for growth” and that the excellence highlighted at the colloquium served as “a powerful bridge between the legacy we have built and the limitless potential of the chapter ahead.”
Smith, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry, further reflected on the theme of legacy in his opening remarks. “For those of you being honored today, your excellence is really a tribute to this college,” he said. “You each represent the pinnacle of our pedagogical standards and are living proof of our mission to promote an economically and socially diverse student body by fostering intellectual achievement and personal growth. As you receive your awards today, remember that you carry the very DNA of Marymount Manhattan College with you.”
The day featured six panels and 25 cross-disciplinary presentations, ranging from an analysis of postcolonial cinema and a phenomenological study of technology’s effects on friendships to an exploration of the lives of black queer men on reality TV. Seven of the presentations were recognized with awards.
In his address, Interim President Peter Naccarato praised students for going the distance academically and not settling for mediocrity, even when pursuing their goals felt like a lonely endeavor. “While your friends may be heading out on a Friday night, or perhaps sleeping in on a Saturday morning, you may be headed to the library or to the lab or to the studio or hunkering down in your room to work on that paper or project,” he said. “…You push yourself to do the best, to exceed expectations, to test your limits, and in doing so, produce something truly special,” he said. “It’s a choice that led to your recognition today, and it’s a choice that will lead you to great success in the future.”
Three of the day’s presentations highlighted work by students at Bedford Hills, where MMC has granted associate and bachelor’s degrees since 1997, and Taconic, where the College has awarded degrees since 2019. Among them was Women’s Labor, a communal art piece created by 17 Taconic students in Professor Mollie Hosmer-Dillard’s class, which received the Social Justice Award, recognizing submissions that foster awareness of social, political, cultural, and ethical issues. The piece examines women’s seen and unseen contributions to family and society through a collage of student drawings arranged in a seven-and-a-half-by-nine-foot heart. It was publicly displayed at a pop-up exhibition held at New York City’s Central Synagogue last November, a first for the Taconic program.
Bedford Hills student Honoree Rebekah Nilsen received the Writing Award for her paper “Prison Journalism: Just a Fad or Here to Stay,” examining the rise and fall of prison newspapers established and run by incarcerated people. Reading excerpts from the paper on Nilsen’s behalf, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Art Erin Greenwell, who also serves as MMC’s Ferraro Fellow in Prison Education, said the analysis was especially noteworthy because it had been written by someone on the inside. “Rebekah said no one knows what happens on the inside better than someone who’s on the inside,” Professor Greenwell added.
Nilsen asked Professor Greenwell to share a message with the audience, emphasizing the humanity of incarcerated people: “Although we’re in prison, we are still very much alive, curious, and intelligent. More than 95 percent of us will be released,” Nilsen said. “But the question is, given the conditions that exist in prisons, will we be better human beings when we are released than when we were first incarcerated? The answer depends as much on the way society treats us while we are imprisoned as it does on our own actions.”
Other student honorees who earned special recognition include Gigi LeClair ’26, who received the Student Faculty Collaboration Award for work on a composition for the mainstage production Comedy of Errors with Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Peter Romano, and Olli Miller ’26, who received an award sponsored by Alpha Chi for her paper, “The Realness of Horror: How Found Footage Cinema Uses Documentary Aesthetics to Make Social Anxieties Tangible.” Honorees Shlomo Turano ’27 and Matthew Cho ’27 received the Alumni Association Award for their sociolinguistics research paper “Interruption and Gender.”
Two students took home the day’s top prize, the Dean’s Award for Excellence, which recognizes the strongest overall submissions. Saz Maroun ’27 won for the short film Flora Knox is Alive and Breathing, which she wrote and directed. The project follows a disgraced supermodel who commits a crime of passion and was filmed in six key locations, using licensed music from an East Village punk rock band. It garnered so much support online that Maroun has since created a distribution plan for it. Paige Syphers ’27 was also recognized for her costume design work on Willy Wonka, for which she conducted extensive research, assigning each main character a distinct holiday and decade to drive the production’s colorful aesthetic. In keeping with her work on the show, Syphers has taken a summer job designing musicals for young audiences.
In addition to presentations and awards, students and faculty paid tribute to Selina Persaud, an International Studies major and gifted student who passed away in June 2025. Associate Professor of Politics and Human Rights Marnie Brady reflected on Persaud’s senior thesis, “Migrant Acceptance Across National Comparative Perspective,” which examined how social demographic factors—such as an aging workforce—intersect with political economy to shape attitudes toward migrants in the UK and Japan.
Among Persaud’s findings was that interpersonal contact with migrants fostered more positive attitudes across diverse segments of the population. “As someone profoundly proud of her Guyanese ancestry and traditions, Selina knew firsthand the life-affirming value of genuine encounter,” Professor Brady said. “Selina understood and conveyed in her scholarship that to be included, to have the opportunity to flourish, means to create a world in common, and that this lives in the tangible interaction of people.”
Persaud’s brother, Steven, accepted two medals on her behalf from Pi Gamma Mu, an international social sciences honor society, and Pi Sigma Alpha, a national political science honor society. Recalling how much his sister loved learning, he said MMC had “challenged her and made her grow.” “In her creative writing class, she wrote a poem about how when you leave this world, you become one with the universe,” he said. “I think about that poem a lot, and I’m grateful that she wrote that here. She grew so much here.”
Published: June 07, 2026
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