St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Isabella Batarseh ’27 has been selected as one of only 20 students nationwide to be a 2026 Partners in Peace Student Ambassador. The Partners in Peace program is a collaboration between the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) and the Nobel Peace Center, which offers selected students the opportunity to study peacework techniques used by Nobel Peace Laureates.
As a Partners in Peace (PiP) ambassador, in the fall Batarseh will attend a weekly virtual course centered around peacework studies. In November, she will also attend the NCHC conference in New Orleans along with her cohort of PiP ambassadors. At the conference, she will participate in a panel discussion about the work of Partners in Peace and will represent the program as a student ambassador. With her PiP ambassador cohort, she will also travel to Oslo, Norway, in December to participate in festivities associated with the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
Batarseh is the president of Students for Justice Club at SMCM, where she has worked to cultivate a club environment of international social justice education and awareness. Batarseh says, “I believe understanding is the first step to finding peace because it helps people empathize with a situation that they may previously have misinterpreted. If we can all see each other as human, then we are one step closer to preventing conflict.” Batarseh applied to be a PiP Student Ambassador because “it looked like an amazing opportunity to expand my knowledge of peace studies, as well as my outreach experience for peacework in the campus and local community.”
Professor Andrew Cognard-Black, a member of the Sociology Department and a Lifetime Fellow of the NCHC, says that “The Partners in Peace collaboration with the Nobel Peace Center is the coolest thing that NCHC has done in its sixty-year history. This program represents an amazing opportunity for students such as Isabella to work together with other honors students from around the world in the spirit of peace and reconciliation. Learning about Alfred Nobel, researching and celebrating the work of Nobel Peace laureates, and striving to build bridges across difference to reinvigorate democratic institutions is important work.” This May, Professors Andrew Cognard-Black, Ph.D., Matt Fehrs, Ph.D., and Parisa Rinaldi, Ph.D., will join President Rhonda Phillips, Ph.D., as an SMCM delegation to the Oslo Peace Congress in Norway to engage with and learn from global advocates for peace, thus strengthening ties between SMCM and the Partners in Peace program.
Batarseh majors in political science and public policy, while also minoring in economics and women, gender and sexuality studies. Following graduation, she plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in Middle Eastern foreign policy. Batarseh was nominated for this award and supported by Professor Fehrs and also received additional mentoring through the National Fellowships & Awards Office (NFAO) from Professor of English and Director of NFAO, Jennifer Cognard-Black, Ph.D.
