Three Elmhurst University honors students presented their research recently at the 58th annual conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council.

Sumaiya Ali ’26, Aziz Imran ’26 and Ambrozia Itellari ’24, all biology majors, were selected to be presenters at the NCHC conference, which took place Nov. 8–12 in Chicago and featured student and faculty research presentations from across the country.

Ali was selected to present “Asymmetric Environment Turns Hexbug’s Motion into Directed Motion.” Imran led a session entitled “Entropy in Cancer Cells.” And Itellari presented the session “Breast Cancer Cells Declining in the Presence of Probiotics.”

In addition, Mary Kay Mulvaney, Ph.D., professor of English and director of the Honors Program at Elmhurst, presented “Advancing Honors Education Aspirations: Experiences from Recent NCHC Program Reviews.”

The conference theme, “Revolutionary Honors: Liberty, Equality, Humanity,” examined the ways in which honors colleges and programs can improve tomorrow’s world through actions today, grouped into the themes of liberty, equality and humanity.

The national submission process for the NCHC annual conference is highly selective, with hundreds of students and faculty submitting proposals each year. Conference presentations provide each participant with the opportunity to showcase the work being done in honors programs across the globe.

During the conference, Honors Program students, faculty and staff networked with other honors students and faculty from around the country and explored Chicago through the Council’s experiential learning projects.

The National Collegiate Honors Council is a non-profit organization that supports and enhances educational institutions, professionals and students who participate in collegiate honors education around the world. Honors Council members total nearly 800 institutions from the United States and around the world.