Lone Star College System brings home top honors from Great Plains Honors Council conference

HOUSTON, TX -- Lone Star College System’s Honors College continues to impress the nation, including at the Great Plains Honors Council conference in Kansas. Forty-four students attended and presented original research alongside students from Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

LSCS students claimed all three Dennis Boe Paper Awards, the GPHC’s most prestigious student research honor.

“The Dennis Boe Award recognizes outstanding scholarship presented by honors students and reflects the rigorous research, critical thinking and mentorship that define the Honors College experience at Lone Star College System,” said Katharine Caruso, Ph.D., LSCS associate vice chancellor, Honors and International Education. “We are so proud of the work our students invested in their outstanding research projects.”

LSCS Honors College students have opportunities throughout the year to grow their confidence in a supportive environment through research, leadership development, conference participation, travel programs, internships and more.

“Presenting my research at the conference was an amazing experience,” said Emanuelly Carmo, LSC-Montgomery Chancellor’s Fellow. “It felt great to present my hard work in front of a room full of people and made me feel proud of all that I've accomplished. The Lone Star College System Honors College is providing me with chances to develop not only my intellectual curiosity, but my soft skills and leadership skills.”

Carmo was one of the three Dennis Boe Award recipients this year for her paper, “From Crisis to Monument: Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple and Ashoka’s Pillars as Strategic Branding Campaigns.” Combining her interests in marketing and ancient societies, she analyzed ancient monument-building as strategic statecraft, spanning Egyptian and Indian history.

Aaliyah Linton, LSC-Kingwood Chancellor’s Fellow and Boe Award winner, focused her research on how sociopolitical control over women shifted in form across four centuries—from accusations of witchcraft to medical pathology—in her paper, “The Continuity of Control: The Shifting Faces of Patriarchal Control over Women from Witchcraft in the 1600s to Hysterics in the 1800s.”

“When I wrote ‘Continuity of Control,’ I wasn’t thinking about awards or even grades—I wrote it because I was genuinely invested in the topic and wanted to explore it in a meaningful way,” Linton said. “Being selected at each step and ultimately winning the award for something I was truly passionate about was intimidating but felt incredibly validating. It reminded me that the work I care about has value, and that my voice—as well as the voices of the women I was studying—deserve to be heard.”

Abiela Swan, LSC-Montgomery Merit Scholar, was also recognized for her research, “Crossing Boundaries: What Jewish & Dutch Epigenetics Reveal about Stress Markers in the Chickasaw Nation,” which explores how historical trauma may influence transgenerational epigenetic patterns across marginalized populations.

“Being a recipient of the Dennis Boe Award opened so many doors for me, from publication to college applications to new connections,” Swan said. “The Lone Star College System Honors College has played a significant role in preparing me for my future goals by challenging me academically and encouraging me to think critically and independently.”

Lone Star College System and Sam Houston State University are slated to co-host the 2027 GPHC conference in The Woodlands next March.

Learn more about the LSCS Honors College at LoneStar.edu/Honors.