Twenty-two seniors completed the Newman University Honors Program in 2025-26, gathering in the Dugan Conference Center on May 8 for a ceremony that capped one of the strongest years in the program’s history.
It was among the largest graduating classes the program has produced since it started in 2007. The Honors Program enrolled 71 students this year and has grown to the point of carrying a waitlist, a milestone Director of the Honors Program Kelly McFall said was once unimaginable when the program first started.
McFall described the 2025-26 class as the kind of cohort that comes along only once every few years.
“Some classes change in ways that are bigger and more significant than others,” he said. “Every three or four years, I get a class like this.”
Bright futures for honor students
The 22 graduates — 21 attended the ceremony — are heading in nearly every direction. Three, Ariana “AJ” Sweitzer, Natalia Lopez and Joseph Luebbe, were accepted to the highly competitive Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Two others, Katie Stewart and Hayley Stewart, will enroll at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in the fall. Rosaline Martinez will work as an oncology nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis; Alaina Waters will join the emergency room team at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph.
April Beach is already teaching fourth grade at Dodge Literacy Magnet Elementary School and will move to first grade next year. Travia Smith will teach kindergarten at Alta Brown Elementary in Garden City. Eliana Gaytan will pursue a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. And Monica Redondo, a biochemistry major from Madrid and leader on the Newman women’s basketball team, received a job offer in quality assurance less than 30 minutes before the ceremony began.
During the ceremony, McFall recognized each graduate individually, describing moments that revealed character: a question asked in class that reframed how everyone in the room thought about something, shifts worked off campus to stay enrolled, projects taken on when nobody required it.
Margaret Di Silvestro Award
He also presented the Margaret Di Silvestro Award for Distinguished Service to the Honors Program, named after Maggie Di Silvestro, one of the Honors Program’s earliest graduates and now a practicing attorney. The award goes to a student whose service made the program better for everyone around them.
This year’s recipient was Sweitzer, a biology (pre-veterinary) major from Las Vegas who had a busy collegiate career: serving two years as a teaching assistant for the Honors freshman seminar, attending the National Collegiate Honors Conference (NCHC) in Chicago and studying abroad on the Europe on Rail trip — all alongside four seasons of varsity soccer for the Newman Jets.
“I just felt so proud of our whole class,” Sweitzer said. “I think we’re one of the biggest classes that have graduated from the Honors Program, and I feel we have really, in a way, already started changing society.”
She had not expected the award.
“I am just so thankful,” she said. “I’m so honored to be in this situation right now.”
Newman’s Honors Program requires a minimum GPA of 3.5 and a combination of dedicated seminars and enhanced coursework across disciplines. About one-third of participants are student-athletes. The program carries a 95% graduate school acceptance rate.
‘Be somebody’s hope’
McFall closed the ceremony with a story about an orphanage he visited in Kenya in the early 2000s. He described what he saw: children with AIDS cared for by people who showed up every day and gave them something to hold onto. He asked the graduates to carry that lesson forward.
“Go off, do amazing things — explore the world, be successful in your field, be successful in relationships,” he said. “But be somebody’s hope.”
Sweitzer said the message connected directly to where she is headed.
“I hope to be that hope for a lot of people — not only the animals, but also their owners as well,” she said.
Be Seen. Be Transformed.
Join a close-knit community of Honors Program scholars who think deeply, engage broadly and graduate ready to make their mark.
