Ashish Acharya, a sophomore here at Southeastern has been nationally awarded by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA) for his work done around the campus with the Campus Activities Board (CAB). The convention Acharya attended, along with Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Jim McHodgkins, was in Atlanta, Ga. from March 23-27.

CAB is an organization that is all about getting events here on campus as well as sponsoring other things like Gumbo Ya Ya, Jam the Jungle and Strawberry Jubilee. CAB, in various forms, has been in existence since the 70s, using their resources to create fun activities that reach campus wide.

“One of the things we try to do with CAB is we try to give the students experience on creating flyers, marketing pieces, working with vendors to buy different things and working on contracts,” said McHodgkins, “So we give them an opportunity to learn while they’re working.”

Bringing entertainers and having a lot of events can become costly. To lessen the financial blow, CAB is a member of the APCA and Acharya spoke about the connection they had.

“CAB is a member of this national organization, which brings together college programming boards and college speakers, entertainers and novelty vendors for the purpose of block booking the talent at cost saving prices,” said Acharya.

Acharya, along with CAB, goes to the APCA to try and find new ideas for programs they think that students would enjoy. Just last week, Sailesh the Hypnotist was brought to campus to perform by Acharya, who believed the event to be a huge success.

Acharya was nominated by former CAB Coordinator Jason Leader and went through a process that involved other students around the country. Four were selected from a large pool of nominations, with Acharya being selected as the recipient of the national honors.

In being nominated, an outline of his contributions was submitted to CAB and his hard work that was mentioned by McHodgkins.

“Ashish goes above and beyond,” said McHodgkins. “He’s very interested in it. He is almost like a professional, sometimes, in doing it. He wants to make sure everything is perfect and he wants to work out these different things. That’s a great honor and it really says a lot about him.”

Acharya is an international student majoring in accounting, and for him to be able to communicate with students and those who he gets to come to the campus shows his dedication to CAB and the university.

“I believe his drive is simply a character trait,” said Leader. “He excels both in and out of the classroom. He is willing to try new techniques and always researching how to do something he is not familiar with.”

Acharya spoke about the award and his feelings about it.

“I feel honored to receive the award, and I am more obligated to work even harder,” said Acharya.