Zach Bailey/Winonan

Winona State University’s Residence Life was awarded this past week with “Program of the Year” by the Midwest Affiliation of College and University Residence Halls (MACURH) under the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH).

Alyssa Stehr, a nursing student at Winona State, first became interested in NRHH last year after joining hall council. Stehr initially applied because of community service and leadership roles, but Stehr explained how she ended up gaining much more. After being inducted last spring, Stehr became the bids and service director and began work on putting together the bid, or proposal, to become program of the year at this year’s MACURH regional conference.

Stehr, along with her six-member team of Bethany Stavran, Becky Dahl, Emily Zoellner, Trevor Frosig and Nick Fowler, followed the page-long list of instructions for the bid. It had to include the effect of what was being talked about, how everything was organized, and what the lasting impacts were,  with a minimum page count of 20 pages.

The group used an anti-cyberbullying theme, “We Are All Warriors.” The bid was split into three different phases: “Think Before You Post,” “#ProjectPositivity” and “We Are All Warriors.”

In two weeks, the bid was divided into different parts and worked on by the team, until the bid was eventually finished and turned in. After multiple weeks of excitement and wondering, in the end it was Winona State that came out of the conference, being named “Program of the Year” by the MACURH.

“The NRHH at Winona hasn’t turned in many bids in the past few years,” Stehr said. “This is a great organization to be a part of and amazing to come out like this.”

Now that Winona State has finished in the regional standings, the bid will wait to see how it competes at the national level in May 2016.

There are still a few conferences left this year, and Winona State’s NRHH plans on creating bids for these as well with hopes of completing three bids this school year.

“Writing this bid was really rewarding,” Stehr began, “I think it’s always rewarding when you recognize something great, and the individuals involved with it. I think that this is a really big program that made an impact on Winona. I think it’s great that we pulled this together to showcase our university and shed the positive light that’s happening here in Winona.”