by Theresa Tran
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Welcome to The Beach!
Excited chatter and the pitter-patter of footsteps filled the second floor of the University Student Union (USU) on Friday, March 29, 2024. Students from college campuses across the country made their way to the USU Ballrooms, with swaying name tags, notes, and a pen in hand. What will today bring? There was a mix of anticipation, nervousness, and curiosity in the air as students looked around the ballroom. For some, this was their first time attending and/or presenting at a conference, and for others, their first time even traveling out of their own home state.
What is the Western Regional Honors Council (WRHC) Conference?
The WRHC Conference was hosted this year at CSULB from Thursday, March 28, through Friday, March 29, and had over 300 Honors students whose research proposals were selected to be presented as workshops, oral presentations, or poster presentations. A great variety of topics were represented, such as the ethics of AI technology, identity development through culture, and genome editing, which all fell under the conference’s theme of 2024: Beyond the Breaking Point: Searching For Buoyancy. The conference was an exciting opportunity for attendees to network with fellow students and faculty, as well as explore our university and city of Long Beach. It was a group of Honors students, including myself, that helped put together these fun conference activities based on our experience going to the 2023 WRHC Conference in Montana the year prior.
Attending the WRHC Conference 2023 in Montana
It was like a fever dream when I received an email from CSULB’s University Honors Associate Director, Dr. Cherell Johnson-Davis, about the opportunity to attend the 2023 WRHC Conference held that year in Montana. My job, along with six other Honors students, was to conduct research on that conference to help plan for the conference at CSULB that would occur the following year. During my time at the 2023 WRHC, I let myself have fun and step out of my comfort zone to meet new students while taking notes on what we could bring back to CSULB. While I was initially nervous, the conference ended up being an amazing, surreal experience that I will forever treasure. I can still clearly remember how we got to meet the keynote speaker, Hank Green (from the popular YouTube channels, Crash Course and SciShow), how we explored the beautiful city of Missoula, Montana, and how I got to connect with so many passionate students, like ourselves. After the conference, five students came back to form a planning team for the 2024 WRHC, with each of us recruiting a small cohort of Honors students to assist us.
Planning the 2024 WRHC Conference
Allow me to introduce our wonderful planning team! Altogether, we had Alyssa Alfaro, Jose Avila, Kylee Khan, and myself. To prepare, we tackled many large tasks, including facilitating the Downtown Long Beach exploration, hosting the welcome reception at the Long Beach Hilton Hotel, planning lunch and dinner entertainment, interviewing the keynote speaker, Dr. Jennifer Abod, and throwing the after party at our very own USU. To emphasize our diverse campus community, we invited the Thuy Van Dance Company and its LB Vietnamese Student Association members, CSULB Zingali, and Grupo Folklórico Mexica de CSULB to perform and celebrate their cultures with us. It was an exciting experience!
Takeaways
After a year of preparation and in anticipation for this conference, I’ve gained more experience in leading a team, collaborating with cultural groups to highlight our diverse university community, and finding ways to keep students engaged. It was an experience that made my time here at the Beach all the more memorable. I hope everyone who attended and volunteered for the 2024 WRHC conference got to take away something they will always cherish as they continue on their own academic journeys.
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