The Morningside College chapter of Alpha Lambda Delta recently received an award for continued efforts to pursue excellence, and one of its members received a $1,000 scholarship.

The Morningside College chapter of Alpha Lambda Delta (ALD) recently received an award for continued efforts to pursue excellence, and one of its members received a $1,000 scholarship.

ALD is a national honor society that recognizes and encourages academic excellence among first-year college and university students. There are chapters at over 275 colleges and universities.

In 2015, the Morningside chapter was one of nine in the nation to receive an Order of the Torch Award from the National Council of ALD for outstanding chapter work in programming, internal communications, campus visibility and overall presentation of the application in a scrapbook. Torch award recipients are not eligible to compete for the award again for four years, so this year Morningside received a Maintaining the Flame Award for continuing to pursue excellence, based on its scrapbook.

In addition, Morningside student Karissa Heckens of Omaha, Neb., was one of 36 students across the country to receive a Jo Anne J. Trow Scholarship in recognition of her academics, leadership, service and contributions to ALD.

Advisers of the Morningside chapter were Terri Curry, vice president for student life and enrollment at Morningside College, and Marty Knepper, professor of English and chair of English and modern languages. Knepper served on the National Council last year as editor of The Flame, ALD’s magazine.

Student officers for the 2016-2017 school year were Jaclyn Arens of Yankton, S.D.; Maddie Dotzler of Omaha, Neb.; Kayla Kirchhoff of Lewis, Iowa; Lauren Lennon of Sergeant Bluff, Iowa; Carly Johnson of Kansas City, Kan.; Madison Pierson of Lake Crystal, Minn.; Nikki Yablonski of Omaha, Neb.; Lexi Gerry of Sac City, Iowa; Sarah Sadler of Sergeant Bluff, Iowa; Morgan Whitehead of Le Mars, Iowa; Natasha (Hongsermeier) Graves of Phillips, Neb.; and Sabrina Guerra of Red Oak, Iowa.