News from The Mahurin Honors College

As the echoes of 'Go Big Red!' fade into the sunset on May 2, 2024, at WKU Commencement’s, senior Ella Schleuning (she/her) is stepping off campus and into the next chapter of her adventure. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Ella “fell in love with Western’s [campus] and I loved the environment.”

As a forensic psychology major, with a clinical and community behavioral health minor, Ella plans to take a gap year after graduation to focus on travel and to save for graduate school. As she shared, “studying abroad was something I wasn’t able to do” and so she wants to travel the world before continuing with her education. Ella selected her major after completing a psychology course in high school stating that she liked “learning about the mind, and criminal aspect of it”, initially thinking that she would work with incarcerated clients or doing criminal profiling, but her WKU psychology courses inspired her to look at “clinical aspects of psychology.”

PSY 390 field placement classes in her major – one with the Big Red School, and another with Fuller Life Counseling – have provided her with an opportunity to work with a clientele of different ages, and she has found that she’s “leaning toward [working with] children in clinical settings.” Her internships have also provided opportunities to “sit in ADHD assessments, and autism assessments” giving her an opportunity to see the full scope of the clinical setting. Now, she’s interested in exploring further family and marriage counseling or learning disorders programs where youth services are the primary focus.

While on campus, Ella served as a resident assistant for 1.5 years and was President of Rho Alpha Sigma (service society for resident assistants), was involved in various psychology clubs, including Psi Chi, the honor society for psychology, which she credited as “great for professional development” because of the programs organized by its leadership. She is also an active member of the WKU Student Alumni Ambassadors organization.

Ella is also completing her capstone experience/thesis (CE/T) as part of her final honors requirements. Her thesis topic is exploring “food accessibility struggles for students with dietary restrictions” on WKU’s campus. Her interest in this topic arose from her mother’s experience with Celiac disease, explaining that watching “her figuring all that out, changing her diet to not have wheat in it, and it’s a challenge, and I’ve met other people on campus with similar restrictions, and I’ve seen them struggle to get food.”

Ella was motivated to complete a CE/T through completion of HON 402, by hearing older peers discuss their CE/T in her honors classes, and by a professor who encouraged her because it would be helpful to her on her way to graduate school admission. She shared that “what worried me the most, seeing that first course [HON 402] discouraged a lot of people, and it made me think if this would be a lot to take on, but I’m glad I did end up doing it. It does seem intimidating, and it’s long, but everything I’ve done has made me more confident.”

With graduation only a few weeks away, Ella reminisced that “time went by very fast, everybody says that, but it flew by” even with her freshman year being affected by COVID-19. However, that sort of start to her university career has “made me more thankful for everything.” Among her fondest WKU and Honors memories, Ella mentioned the Honors colloquia courses, specifically, the Mammoth Cave course with Dr. Chris Groves, Director of Crawford Hydrology Lab, and the Prisons and Tourists course with Dr. Eric Knackmuhs, Associate Professor, Recreation, Park & Nonprofit Administration, and that these courses were “really cool – not your typical class[es] – and it’s cool each time.”

Ella’s parting words of wisdom for incoming students are, “The biggest thing I would say is get yourself out there – I know a lot of people say that, but it really is important, even if you’re not a part of clubs or organizations, go and get lunch with a friend. Get yourself out of bed.” She also highly endorses spending time at Spencer’s Coffeeshop downtown and grabbing some donuts at the Great American Donut Shop (GADS) to experience the favorite local haunts of WKU students.