The IDS team looks forward to our celebratory events at the end of each term, but the one on May 4, 2022, was particularly special because it was our first one in person since 2019. As we all so deeply know, these past few years have been H A R D. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Our seniors have seen lockdowns, emergency remote classes, mask mandates, weekly testing, quarantine, and isolation. They have worked through uncertainty, illness, and hardship and they have all demonstrated perseverance and their collective success is a triumph. Congratulations, Class of 2022!
Senior Capstones
Matt put together a dynamic Capstone Project Showcase which he unveiled at our End of the Semester Celebration. We also got to hear live presentations of capstones from IDS seniors Joe Mitchell, CJ Paquette, Anna Bays, David Hammond, Mark Iamele, and David Duda. Kudos to this year’s seniors for their thoughtful inquiry and persistence in these projects when all of us felt the fatigue of a difficult year academic coming to an end. All who attended our celebration were impressed with the level of engagement and professionalism displayed by student’s work on their capstones; we encourage everyone to explore these projects. They stand as testaments to hard work in difficult times.
Senior Award Winners
We were also so incredibly thrilled to award two graduating students with special awards. Acadia Herbst received our 2022 Distinguished Graduating Student Award, and Eliana Jones received our 2022 Oustanding Senior Award in Interdisciplinary Studies. Both are so deserving of these awards and embody everything we love about our Interdisciplinary Studies majors!
Acadia Herbst is also a recipient of the Top 20 Senior Award. Eliana Jones is also recipient of the Student Powerful Outstanding Women’s Advocate Award, Campus Compact for New Hampshire President’s Leadership Award, Outstanding Leadership Award, Top 20 Senior Award, and was the Sally Boland Essay Contest 3rd Place Winner.
Acadia Herbst '22
Each academic discipline awards a Distinguished Graduating Senior each year. The person who is named the Distinguished Graduating Student has the honor of representing the graduating class by donning their program’s colors and leading their class in marching during commencement. In determining our Distinguished Senior, we consider students who embody the spirit of the IDS major. IDS majors are intellectually curious, experimental, energetic, passionate, creative. IDS majors take risks, solve problems, persevere, and achieve their goals. Our 2022 Distinguished Graduating Student, Acadia Herbst, embodies these characteristics of the IDS major and will be well suited to physically and metaphorically lead the graduating class during commencement.
Acadia embodies interdisciplinarity in everything she does. She built a major titled Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Design, which was a way for her finally to bring together all the elements of her passions — business and entrepreneurship, sustainability, and art and design. Describing herself on her ePort, she wrote, “When I found the interdisciplinary studies program that Plymouth offered, I knew that this was the key to really allow myself to excel by using all of my passions, and skills together. I’m very passionate about art and design and expressing oneself through it as well as being enthusiastic about the planet, our environment, preserving it, and doing all I can to live more sustainably and also help others live that way too.” She has built her own already successful business where she upcycles secondhand clothing and turns it into updated, and fashionable styles that are size-inclusive and affordable. For her Senior Seminar project, she built a complete website for Plymouth State’s GNAR club, a women’s sports club that mostly revolves around skating and snowboarding, She built a platform for the club to continue to advocate for women in board sports and included a merch line, a resource center, and many other things that the club requested. She was Student Art Collective President from 2019-2022 at Plymouth State, worked with sewing machine company “Eversewn” to create sponsored content for them via Instagram & Tiktok, and was 1 of 9 first artists selected to be a part of the startup company “Vveave”, a custom clothing app designed for users to send their clothing to upcycling artists to recreate. And she has way more followers on TikTok and Instagram than most people I know.
Acadia embodies the full spirit of Interdisciplinary Studies. She doesn’t know how not to be interdisciplinary in her work and life and worldview. If anybody asks, “What is Interdisciplinary Studies,” I am happy to answer: “Acadia Herbst.”
Acadia, we are honored to name you as Interdisciplinary Studies’ 2021 Distinguished Graduating Student.
Eliana Jones '22
The Outstanding Graduating Student Award is given out to exemplary graduating seniors in each academic discipline. In determining our Outstanding Senior, the Interdisciplinary Studies Program considers students who have shown a commitment to, passion for, and excellence in Interdisciplinary Studies. The Outstanding Senior must not only be a good student, but more importantly must be someone for whom interdisciplinarity is a core part of their intellectual journey, and who can articulate both how and why Interdisciplinary Studies empowered them toward new possibilities. This year, we are proud to honor Eliana Jones with the Interdisciplinary Studies Outstanding Graduating Student Award.
Eliana is a force of nature. We knew this the minute she walked into our office, wanting to construct a major that allowed her to pursue her dream of finding a career in broadcast journalism. Eliana’s program, “Climate and Weather Communications” is aptly named because, although coming from a background in meteorology, Eliana’s understanding of climate exceeds the bounds of atmospheric pressure and numerical weather prediction. Eliana has developed a nuanced understanding of climate and climate change and the ways that community and social justice must be interwoven into these conversations. When she renamed her program this last semester, she wrote to the IDS office: “I want to be able to be able to do broadcast meteorology and segments on climate change that highlight the people that are mostly forgotten in these conversations, like Black and minority communities, as well as poorer and less finically lucrative communities… Climate and weather are both in the title because climate deals with bigger picture, future conditions while weather talks about what people are dealing with right now.”
Beyond her program, Eliana’s employment in the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative and PASS Office, her involvement in the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice, and her leadership of the Black Student Union has demonstrated cross-institutional interdisciplinarity. Eliana writes, “The tools [of interdisciplinarity] not only have helped me step into a confident student; they have also helped me become a more confident person overall. I know how to use the knowledge I have learned and apply it to any situation where it is needed. I have been able to look at projects, assignments, and so many other ventures as a whole picture now rather than just seeing individual aspects. Interdisciplinary Studies has allowed me to understand how everything plays a part and is important; and that if I allow my greatest strengths and skills to work together, then nothing is too difficult to accomplish.” Eliana has been strong, brave, and ready to stand up for social justice and lead other students in a coalition to make PSU more inclusive.
It is because of this deep understanding and engagement with interdisciplinarity, both within and outside of the bound of the classroom, that we are proud to award Eliana as our 2022 Outstanding Graduating Student.
Inducting New Members of Alpha Iota Sigma
On Wednesday night, we officially inducted our newest members of the Plymouth State University chapter of Alpha Iota Sigma. Alpha Iota Sigma (AIS) is a nationally recognized Honor Society for exemplary students of interdisciplinary studies. The mission of Alpha Iota Sigma is to recognize and advance the academic scholarship and achievements of interdisciplinary students. As an honor society, Alpha Iota Sigma: promotes the benefits of interdisciplinary work; provides a forum to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration among students, faculty, and community members; investigates and encourages methods of interdisciplinary learning; enhances understanding and application of interdisciplinary knowledge among the general public; and creates a sense of community among interdisciplinary students and graduates of interdisciplinary programs.
Student members of Alpha Iota Sigma advance this mission by: motivating their peers to excel in interdisciplinary scholarship; fostering connections between their academic coursework and the larger community through civic engagement projects; encouraging honors graduates to be leaders in addressing the complex problems of contemporary society with the highest intellectual, ethical, and moral standards.
The following students were inducted:
Shannon Ford (’21)
Shelby Goodell-Spooner (’24)
Shannon Goodwin (’22)
Eliana Jones (’22)
Julie Miller (’22)
Joseph Mitchell (’23)
Camilla Puzio (’24)
Alicia Tichy (’22)
Elizabeth Watkins (’22)
Colleen Joy (CJ) Paquette (’22)
Kristina Stevens (’22)
A big congrats to our new inductees, especially our ’21 and ’22 grads who will proudly wear their AIS cords during graduation!
A Send-Off
Matt and I are always sad-but-happy at the end of an academic year. IDS students are so special and so many of you touch our lives every day. As our graduating seniors leave PSU, we hope that you all remember the unique skills that all IDS students bring to the table. Collaboration, passion, out-of-the-box thinking, interpersonal skills, and motivation are second nature to a group of students who had to forge their own path in college. We hope you all stay in touch and let us know what you’re up to when you have career or educational updates to share!
Email us at psu-ids@plymouth.edu if you have any pictures from graduation or the celebration that you want to share!
❤️ Hannah
Pictures from our End of Semester Celebration and Graduation
