Texas A&M Business Honors

Signature Work truly provides students with the opportunity to explore ideas, experiences, and passions which they care deeply about. This could not be more evident through Grace Styksal’s project centered around her love of art. Check out her incredible work!

“Through my signature work project, I explored how I have been able to incorporate art into my college experience. My learning experiences throughout this project included taking an art minor, becoming involved with the MSC Visual Arts Committee on campus, and finding ways to impact others through art. For my tangible output I created a series of marker and ink illustrations of different places around Texas A&M’s campus.”

For more: .art

Check out Leigh Olsen’s Signature Work - The Emotional Impact of Film. Leigh deepened her understanding and passion for film through professional internships, film festivals, and online film communities. See what she had to say below:

“I used my Signature Work as an opportunity to explore and deepen my understanding of something I’ve loved my whole life: film. Through industry experience, film festival immersion, and engagement with film communities, I observed the varying functions films serve beyond entertainment and became certain that my career path lies within the film industry.”

Next up on our Signature Work Highlights, Hailey Luensmann learned about women impacting law on both the national and local level.

“My project centered around interviews with local women across various practices, books and documentaries covering past and current Supreme Court Justices and women leading national movements, and travel throughout the North East where trailblazers established the right we enjoy today. I had the opportunity to visit the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, which as the former home base of the National Women’s Party who fought for women’s suffrage. Over the past two years, I have learned the importance of putting energy into the efforts you care about and how my career can include both professional and personal passions!”

Baseball, good company, and the best Former Students around — what more could we ask for?

We loved spending the evening with our Former Students this past Friday. Thank you for coming out, and we hope to see even more of you next year! ⚾️☀️

Next up in our Signature Work series: “Looking beyond the headlines”

Logan Juare’s Signature Work focused on the media’s portrayal of politics, exploring how politics is often associated with themes of hate, fear, and division, and how these perceptions are shaped and distorted by our media consumption.” As his tangible output, he coded a website that allows users to input a news article link and compare how the same issue is portrayed across the political spectrum, an idea inspired by Ground News. Read about what he was able to do through his Signature Work below: “Throughout my signature work, I participated in various student organizations, lobbied government officials (leading to the eventual passage of a bill), attended political conferences, read a variety of literature and academic papers, studied abroad (seeing firsthand how foreign perceptions of American media are formed), and pursued a graduate certificate from the Bush School.”

Everyone deserves meaningful work - but not everyone has access to it. Seeing this gap, Mary Claire Simpson focused her signature work on removing the gap between meaningful work and those with disabilities. Read about her Signature Work below:

“Growing up with an older sister who has Down Syndrome, the world of inclusion has always surrounded me. This world changed as my sister graduated and began searching for a job, as I quickly saw her and her peers, struggle to find meaningful work. Seeing this need as I entered college and started my signature work, there was no doubt that this was the perfect centerpiece: inclusivity of all abilities in the workforce. Many resources exist for people with disabilities looking for support, but a gap still exists between this community and meaningful work. I wanted to research, build a breadth of experience, and ultimately advocate to local businesses on behalf of the disability community in Bryan-College Station. I was able to interview local business, visit CSISD schools, volunteer at the Bee Community, Capernaum Younglife, serve on Beloved and Beyond Staff and as an intern, and take coursework offering me a breadth of knowledge when it comes to advocating for and accommodating all abilities. I was then able to build a practical guide to help create businesses create more inclusive workplaces. I hope to take the knowledge I learned from signature work and carry it forward by actively working to remove barriers and create opportunities for others.”

Next up on our Signature Work Highlights, Christina Rodriguez! Passionate about running, Christina began a run club at A&M, and ran 4 marathons and 3 half marathons. Read about her project below:

“My signature work project focused on building a positive, health focused community centered around my passion for running. To bring this vision to life, I founded REV UP Run Club with Carter Poore, aiming to motivate and inspire others to develop healthy habits. Since starting REV UP, we’ve experienced so much growth, and I’ve cherished the opportunity to serve others and create meaningful value. Sharing my passion while fostering such a supportive and inspiring community in College Station has been so incredibly rewarding.” 🏃🏼‍♀️✨

Kicking off our Signature Work Highlights, we have Cason Johnson! Cason created his own musical instrument for his Signature Work. Read about his project below:

“The center piece of my signature work was the “Creation of Musical Instruments.” I started playing guitar my freshmen year in the dorms and have loved it — music just became a part of my everyday life! I always had a longing to build an instrument, and my signature work was a great excuse for myself to pursue that! I learned so many things throughout this experience. The most notable is that learning can be for fun, not career oriented, and that making mistakes is truly the only way you will learn. If I could redo this guitar, there would be so many things I would change, from the sanding process all the way to the final details. I almost didn’t make a guitar as my tangible output. I didn’t have the equipment necessary to make the body of the guitar so I used a StewMax kit guitar kit to start this process! Claire continued to push me to pursue this even when I didn’t know if I could do it. I’m incredibly thankful for her!”

This is what Aggie tradition looks like up close♥️
We’re proud to highlight one of our students, Will McBride ‘28, who served as Second Leash for Reveille this past year. When asked what his favorite part of the job was, Will said undoubtedly interacting with everyone in Aggieland.
We couldn’t be more proud. Whoop!

Happy Ring Day!
Huge congratulations to our students who officially BTHO 90 hours 👍