With Honors: The ‘Transformative’ Experience of the Honors Program
What do personal memoirs or spy novels have to do with a business education? On the surface, not much. But through the Babson Honors Program, high-achieving students pursue passion projects such as these through independent research, with outcomes that shape them into entrepreneurial leaders on campus and beyond.
“The Honors Program has a huge impact on students, because it gives them an opportunity to do something outside the standard Babson curriculum that they’re really passionate about,” says Sabrina Stehly, the associate director of the Honors Program. “Babson is unique in that way: We really value the possibilities of undergraduate research.”
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The program marks its 30th anniversary this year. It originated as a means for faculty to advise student research. Associate Professor of Accounting Robert Turner P’07, who retired in 2023, formalized the program, which has graduated 562 students to date.
Now, roughly 100 undergraduate students apply and 45 are admitted each year, when they form a tight cohort that bonds through retreats and seminars. As seniors, students also embark on research projects. They earn a total of 10 academic credits for seminars and research combined while collaborating one on one with a faculty advisor. Their diploma holds an honors distinction, and they walk first at graduation. Stehly and her team look for academic excellence—a 3.4 GPA is required—but also seek students who have a burning drive to dig into a specialized topic.
“The Honors Program has a huge impact on students, because it gives them an opportunity to do something outside the standard Babson curriculum that they’re really passionate about.”
Sabrina Stehly, associate director of the Honors Program
“Our students are high-achieving and want to take on an autonomous project that they can control themselves,” Stehly explains. “We want students to find a niche, a creative outlet, that they’re not going to get in a typical business class. This really gives them the opportunity to shine academically.”
“Thirty years in, the Honors Program remains one of Babson’s most transformative experiences,” says Krista Hill Cummings, the director of the Honors Program and an associate professor of marketing. “It’s where students discover that research isn’t just about answers—it’s about exploration, courage, and finding one’s voice as a thinker and a leader. That’s the legacy we’re proud to carry forward.”
A Personal Journey
For instance, the Honors Program gave Sukanya Mukherjee ’19 an opportunity to share an intimate story through memoir. The project, “The Bridge Between Us,” recounts Mukherjee’s complex relationship with her older sister, who is deaf and developmentally delayed. She was advised by Associate Teaching Professor Stephen Bauer.
“The level of care and thoughtfulness he had toward teaching me and respecting my story was unmatched. I’d never received that level of investment and support from a professor before,” she says, adding that it was essential because the story was so sensitive.
And, in fact, writing about her sister’s struggles with the medical establishment did shape her business path. Now, Mukherjee is pursuing an MBA and public health degree at the University of California at Berkeley to prepare for a career promoting medication and vaccine access.
“My interest in public health comes from my relationship with my sister, learning to be an advocate in her healthcare interactions,” she says. “The program, and writing the memoir itself, helped me process that my sister taught me empathy, to connect with other people, and care for others.”
A Love for Research
In other cases, the program allows students to explore entrenched social dynamics that hold personal significance. Devakshi Chandra ’11 came to Babson from New Delhi. Although she already helped to run her family’s polymer compounding and manufacturing business, she was intimidated by the prospect of high-level research. The Honors Program was appealing but daunting.
“In India, we don’t really have that much research in high school. It’s a more structured program,” she reflects.
A weekend brainstorming retreat boosted her confidence and strengthened her resolve: She chose to research the 2008 financial crisis to see what variables in financial institutions needed to be checked and kept under control for success, and to examine the early indicators of financial downturn.
“My inclination was to ask: Could it have been prevented?” she remembers. Her thesis was titled “Bankruptcies, Bailouts, and Buyouts.” Working closely with Virginia Soybel, associate professor of practice in accounting, and George Recck ’82, MBA’84, associate professor of practice, Chandra created a regression model that predicted financial institutions’ risk for bankruptcy—while she blossomed academically.
“I’d be writing my honors thesis on Friday and Saturday nights, just because I loved it so much,” she recalls, laughing. “It taught me to think on my feet, to think critically, and to be very data-centric. Who would have thought that I could have created a logistic regression model for financial institutions at 18?”
The experience inspired her to obtain a business doctorate at the University of Cambridge, examining how privilege, social class, and workplace ecosystems affect women’s business opportunities. Chandra hopes her work will inform policy changes and reduce gender disparities, motivated in part by wanting a better environment for her daughter. Before enrolling, she consulted her Babson mentor, Soybel, who retired in 2024.
“I graduated 14 years ago; I’ve been through marriage, a daughter, and an MBA; and she is such an inspiration, still. She was so happy to jump on a call. She was so happy for me,” Chandra says. “Babson was the base that got me into research today.”
A Global Perspective
A full academic scholarship with the Global Scholars Program enabled Kaif Bailey ’26 to attend Babson from Jamaica. As a first-year student, he contemplated his international student experience by exploring race, gender, and inequality in the required Foundations of Critical Inquiry class. He resolved to build on that interest with the Honors Program.
Although he is immersed in a business analytics degree, he also is researching the academic motivation and outcomes of second-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants, driven by his own experiences as an international student navigating sociocultural differences in the United States.
“Students with my background are underrepresented in research and also in general on college campuses,” Bailey says. “Caribbean students face a dilemma where they have to choose between their ethnic identity—Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian—and a racial identity. It’s more common to identify just as Black. You’re absorbed into a system that looks at race as one homogenous thing. I’m researching how that can spill into academic motivation.”
Bailey spoke about the rare opportunity to fuse personal experience with academic pursuit at the Honors Program’s 30th anniversary celebration at Back to Babson in October.
“These are themes and issues that are speaking directly to things that I have gone through. That’s part of my motivation,” he explains.
“Thirty years in, the Honors Program remains one of Babson’s most transformative experiences.”
Krista Hill Cummings, director of the Honors Program and associate professor of marketing
A Well-Rounded Education
Today, Benjamin Luippold ’01 is an accounting professor at Babson. But 25 years ago, he was a Babson student who happened to love movies. He wanted to take a film class, but it conflicted with a required accounting course.
Fortunately, he was also part of the Honors Program, which previously had a study abroad component in London. While there, lacking a TV in his bare-bones residence hall room, he devoured John Grisham novels. His honors thesis examined the narrative theory of legal thrillers, about as far from accounting as a student can get. But Luippold says the experience made him a sharper, more multifaceted professor. He graduated from the Honors Program to become a Babson faculty member and has served on the Honors Council, which guides the program.
“A good part of a faculty member’s job is research. The Honors Program gave me the confidence to ask unique, interesting questions,” he says. “I’m not doing a lot of John Grisham research right now, but the idea behind it—the fact that I could enter a new arena of knowledge—gave me the confidence that, when it was time to really rip the Band-Aid off and pursue a PhD, I could do it.”
Mukherjee, the memoirist now pursuing an advanced degree in public health, agrees. The program gave her a chance to step beyond her comfort zone, with lasting results.
“The Honors Program is a really big testament to Babson’s focus on both liberal arts and business education,” she says. “It helps people gain a deeper perspective on who they are, beyond business. It gives people a chance to show their humanity in a culture that’s really workplace dominant.”
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