Emma Ellis and Madison Davis are best friends, roommates and now president and vice president of the Marshall University Honors College Steering Committee. The friends are using their new positions to raise awareness for the Honors College and let honors students know their input matters.

Ellis, sophomore chemistry major, said she and Davis, junior biology major, were randomly assigned as roommates last year on the honors floor of their dorm. They said the Honors College truly brought them together.

Davis said, “It’s kind of helpful that we live together and are best friends because I’ll get an idea sitting in the living room, and I’ll just yell at her and be like, ‘Hey, we need to do that,’ or ‘Have you thought anything about this?’”

Davis and Ellis joined the 12-person Steering Committee last semester as freshmen representatives and decided to run for leadership positions together.

“I’m really glad we were in it last semester, so we knew what we liked and what we didn’t like about it,” Ellis said. “So this year, we just got into the flow of things, and we know what worked last year and what didn’t work.”

The steering committee meets once a week as a class to plan the four major events of the semester: a social, academic, fundraising and service event. Ellis said the ultimate purpose of the committee is to “unite and celebrate the Honors College.”

“What the Honors College says about the steering committee is that every student in the Honors College is a part of the steering committee, and they place twelve students in this class to kind of oversee it,” Davis said. “And so, we’re a lot more open to ideas, other people helping, interacting with it than what people know.”

Both Ellis and Davis highlighted the unique community the Honors College provides for like-minded students.

“Because the Honors College has students from every other college, it’s not like your traditional college,” Davis said. “You take classes in whatever your major is, and it’s just kind of an umbrella that houses all of the students. It’s a way to kind of bring everyone together. If we didn’t have the Honors College or the steering committee, I wouldn’t see journalism students or education majors.”

The next Honors College event is a trivia night scheduled for 5 p.m. Oct. 5 in Room 2W22 of the Memorial Student Center. 

Caroline Kimbro can be contacted at [email protected].