Lilly Thomann (’15 VPRED) submitted a version of her Capstone to the National Art Education Association (NAEA) conference to see if she could share her work with professionals from around the country. She recently received the happy news that her paper, “Developing Self-love, Self-worth, and Body Acceptance through the Arts,” was accepted for inclusion in the program for the 2016 NAEA National Convention in Chicago, IL, March 17-19.

Lilly’s Capstone draws on her personal experiences as an artist-teacher, student, and woman. She developed lesson plans designed to promote self-worth and body image acceptance for adolescents. The supporting teaching philosophy and unit rationale described ways in which teachers can draw from art history and contemporary art to support and empower students.

Acceptance to speak at the conference is a great honor. The NAEA received a record number of presentations and the caliber of this year’s presentations was excellent—making the acceptance highly competitive, approximately 39% of all submissions.

Lilly wrote to us to say, “I wanted to thank you and the Honors Program for helping me achieve something like this! And for giving me the opportunity to hopefully make the world and future of our students a little brighter!”