When Hannah Morris walked onto the field at Carter-Finley Stadium during Homecoming last fall, she knew she was about to be celebrated along with her fellow Leader of the Pack finalists. What she did not know was who would be named the winner.
“I was shaking,” said Morris, a Goodnight Scholar and applied education studies major. “I was so nervous. There were so many people, and you want to know who won.”
She didn’t have to wait long. With her parents standing beside her, Morris soon heard her name echo across the stadium as the Leader of the Pack. She was shocked.
“If freshman year me knew I won Leader of the Pack, she would say, ‘There’s no way.’” Morris said.
The Leader of the Pack award honors and recognizes students for outstanding contributions in leadership, scholarship and service. As a freshman, Morris had not made much progress toward those goals, she said.
It wasn’t until the end of her first year at NC State, when she applied to be an outreach ambassador for the Goodnight Scholarships program, that things began to change. In that role, she was able to visit North Carolina high schools and promote Goodnight Scholarships to students who otherwise might not consider it as a possibility.
“That was where I found my true passion for education, which is trying to fix the barriers to higher education,” Morris said. “Once I found my passion, I was able to involve myself in organizations and clubs that I truly felt on fire for.”
Those organizations included the Office of Admissions’ Emerging Scholars Academy, the NC State College of Education’s Education Council and NC State’s chapter of Best Buddies, an organization that helps foster one-to-one friendships between NC State students and individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Sophomore year, Morris was matched with her buddy, Wyatt, which sparked a lasting friendship.
“He’s one of the coolest people I know,” Morris said. “He’s a really big NC State sports fan, and we went to basketball games and volleyball games together.”
That friendship also inspired Morris to become further involved with the organization and, in her senior year, she served as the president of Best Buddies, with the goal of creating even more meaningful relationships.
“What unifies us is our passion for making sure that people with IDD feel welcome and that they have a space, and they have a community that they can lean on,” Morris said.
Morris’ drive to use higher education as a way to create opportunities for others has made the College of Education a perfect fit for her growth as a leader.
“It’s just shaped so much of who I am,” Morris said. “The people have shaped me; the curriculum has shaped me, and the experiences that I have been given have shaped me. It’s really impactful for how small of a college it is in comparison to some of the other ones that we have at NC State—you can definitely feel the community.”
Morris will graduate in May, and she is currently applying to higher education graduate programs.
“I’ll be able to take the relevant experience that I had as an undergraduate student and translate it into work experience,” Morris said. “Hands-on learning, experiential learning—that all comes from the College of Education.”
In the long term, Morris hopes to be a chancellor, but no matter what she does next, she’ll always be a Leader of the Pack.
“It is like a huge honor and also a great responsibility,” Morris said. “This is a legacy that I want to carry with me, and it’s a good reminder that the people that I want to serve now at NC State are the people that I forever want to serve.”