News

Southwestern Michigan College inducted three members into Psi Beta, the national community college psychology honor society, on March 1 in the Foster W. Daugherty Building on SMC’s Dowagiac campus.

The three new members are Hannah Appoloni of Three Rivers, Hailie Lucas of Wisconsin and Mark McAfee of Benton Harbor.

Appoloni graduates April 29 and plans to transfer to Western Michigan University to become a child psychologist.

“I came here for nursing,” Appoloni said, but “I took a psychology class as one of my pre-reqs and really liked it.”

Lucas, who is in the Honors Program, grew up in Virginia, where her father served in the Navy, finished high school in New Lisbon, Wis., and selected SMC intending to transfer to Michigan State University.

Last April, for one of her two Honors projects, she explained the Jan. 6 insurrection with social psychology concepts.

“I’m thinking of working with children” after continuing to study psychology at MSU after graduating this spring. “I want to get out there in the field and figure it out that way.”

McAfee, Psychology Club vice president, came to the college in 2015 from Benton Harbor High School to study agriculture technology through SMC’s partnership with MSU.

Graduating this summer at 26, “I want to do research, then become a therapist,” McAfee said. “I lived in Kalamazoo for two years, and my interest in psychology started then, in 2018, watching YouTube videos with psychologists, and reading articles. I was working factory jobs and started to realize how many people are not empathetic toward others.

“I detoured out of college for five or six years,” traveling and working in Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina during the pandemic. “The journey was for me to develop and grow. Eventually, I decided it was time to go back to college” and he returned to Benton Harbor.

Psi Beta, founded in 1982, requires members to possess at least a 3.25 GPA with 12 hours of psychology credits.

SMC’s chapter, established in 2018, is one of five SMC honor societies, along with the American Criminal Justice Association’s Lambda Alpha Epsilon; Gamma Nu Chapter of Alpha Beta Gamma, the international community college business honor society; Sigma Psi Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for community colleges; and SMC’s own Honors Program as avenues for the college’s brightest students to shine academically.

Assistant Professor Christy Tidd, Psi Beta adviser and a 2006 SMC graduate; Provost Dr. David Fleming; Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Dr. Keith Howell; and Social Science Department Chair Dr. Barbara Karwacinski each offered brief congratulatory remarks during the candlelit ceremony.