As the current school year comes to a close the National Honors Society is beginning to cycle through its leadership. According to the NHS director Lindsey Meyer, their current leaders are graduating and have decided on their new sovereign based on the new ideas suggested by applicants.

“NHS stands for National Honor Society, it stands for academics, leadership, character and service. We don’t meet every week, but we provide opportunities to do service projects to bring back to the community,” Meyer said. “It is a leadership opportunity to give more opportunities for students to stand up for their communities.” 

According to Anna Turcotte, the new president of the NHS, officers carry a decent amount of responsibility in their community and group.

“My job is to set up group meetings and pretty organize the group as a whole,” Turcotte said. “We do officer meetings for the organization of the program and also individual meetings where we as officers will help and assist NHS members meet individual hour goals.” 

According to Carys Raymond, the future vice president, the NHS program is wonderful for outreach in the local area.

“I think that the NHS is a really cool operation. I really think it is cool and I am pretty decent at organizing programs, so I stepped in to work on our community,” said Raymond. “It is supposed to teach you how to be a better person in your community. It teaches those to help their community more.” 

Like the new leadership on the NHS, this is also Meyer’s first year as advisor and she plans to bring new ideas to the table to improve Park’s NHS program.

“I am going to change who is allowed in so more people can be let in. We need to not include a large GPA requirement, I want to include those outside the requirement because the best of the best also have a lower GPA,” Meyer said. “I also want to do more service projects so they aren’t repeated and are more varied. I was so shocked to see elementary schools needing the NHS. It is such a good opportunity for students to grow with the elementary school.”

Turcotte said, one of the main ways that the NHS society interacts with others outside their internal members is with volunteering.

“As a group it is important we do a ton of volunteering,” Turcotte said. “It looks very good on college apps so it can open doors for students who don’t have as much access to the connections that others have.” 

According to Raymond, the officers have already begun to slide into their leadership roles and work to improve and change the system we currently have.

“We are trying to make the NHS more prevalent in the building. We thought that many people in the school don’t know about the NHS, so we are working to inform them it is an option. We are doing this by talking to sophomores and telling them about our program,” said Raymond. “We are also hosting teacher appreciation day more, so we are planning to do more of those compared to last year.”