Jacqueline Hannon ’15 has received the Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.

Hannon completed her Bachelor of Science in Business, Management and Economics, with a concentration in marketing, in 2015, and graduates from SUNY Empire with an MBA in Business Management, and a specialization in International Business, this spring.

The Baldwinsville, N.Y., resident maintained a 3.84 GPA while completing her MBA.

Hannon was selected to be a student speaker for the 2015 commencement event at Syracuse. In 2017, she was one of the recipients of the SUNY Empire State College Student Service award and completed the college’s year-long Student Leadership Institute program.

Currently, Hannon manages high-end craft beer, wine and spirits for Eagle Beverage, Oswego, N.Y. She also recently sold her businesses Sugar and Spice Party Planners, a children's party-planning service, which has been in business for 10 years, and Human Connect Four, a social media and marketing firm.

Throughout her time as a student, Hannon, the single parent of two sons, Sean, 21, and Patrick, 18, worked full time and traveled as she completed her degrees.

“I have to talk about my kids when I talk about why I went to school,” she says. “I had decided I would have my bachelor’s degree by the time my first son graduated from high school. I owned a business and was working full time. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But, I crossed the stage in the beginning of June and he crossed the stage at the end of June in 2015. Then, I decided I would have my master’s by the time my second son graduates. I did that too.”

After Hannon’s youngest son graduates from high school this June, like his older brother, he will attend a SUNY school in the fall.

She says she always had to work at more than one thing at once “to bring in extra money so I could do and buy special things for my kids. What they saw was me working my butt off. I did homework in trains, planes and automobiles.”

Although Hannon has a work area and desk at home, she accomplished more of her work in Las Vegas, Cape Cod, Italy and Germany, while travelling for work.

“Some people need a desk, some people need to be mobile,” she says. “Every student at SUNY Empire can work with their mentors and figure out how to get a degree. My undergraduate and graduate work have changed my life. I was studying supply chain management, for example, when I was in Italy at a table using what I had just learned with the group. It was pretty cool.”

Throughout her time as a student and working mother, she also served on boards and as chair for local nonprofit women’s leadership organizations and raised $14,000 as a volunteer team leader to support the local ACR Health, a nonprofit community health organization serving nine counties in Central New York, where she had worked full time as assistant director of development.

About The Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence

Created in 1997, the award honors students who have demonstrated and achieved recognition for integrating academic excellence with accomplishments in several areas, including:

• leadership
• athletics
• community service
• creative and performing arts
• campus involvement
• career achievement.

Each year, campus presidents establish selection committees, which review nominations of exemplary students. Selected nominations are forwarded to the chancellor’s office and subject to a second round of review by a committee, which includes members of the chancellor’s office, the provost’s office and other professionals at SUNY system administration. Finalists then are recommended to the chancellor for her determination.

Each award recipient receives a framed certificate and medallion, which is worn at commencement and other academic events requiring regalia.