Sustainability Awards nominations now being accepted

The Ohio University Office of Sustainability is now accepting nominations for the 2025 Sustainability Awards. The awards recognize students, staff, faculty, departments and community members or organizations for their outstanding contributions to sustainability at Ohio University or in the local community.

The awards are open to all OHIO students, faculty and staff on any of Ohio University's campuses and the Community Sustainability Award is open to community members or groups. Award winners will be announced at the Campus and Community Earth Day Celebrations on April 14, 2025. 

The deadline to submit a nomination is March 13, 2025, and the categories for nominations are:

• Faculty Sustainability Award: This recognition is awarded to a faculty member who has made exemplary contributions to his or her field through sustainability-related teaching, research, scholarship or service. (Sustainability Hub Coordinators are ineligible for this award.)    
• Student Sustainability Leader(s) Award: This award recognizes one student (or student group) who has excelled in sustainable actions and leadership at Ohio University during their time as a student. This can include class projects, club events, personal behaviors/actions, volunteerism and the like. This award is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.  
• Staff Sustainability Advocate Award: This award is given to a staff member who has served as an advocate for advancing sustainability initiatives at Ohio University or served in a support role to assist student, faculty, staff or community led initiatives. (Office of Sustainability staff members are ineligible for this award.)  
• Exemplary Sustainability Department Award:  This award is given to an office or department at Ohio University that has shown great leadership in a variety of sustainable behaviors including, but not limited to, advancing the Sustainability and Climate Action Plans, encouraging health and wellness among its employees, investing in local goods and services, reducing its landfilled waste generation, participating in energy reduction efforts, and engaging in shared office resources.
  Any department which completes the Sustainable Tracking and Evaluation Program (STEP) will be automatically nominated in this award category if a certification application was submitted within the past academic year.  
• Community Sustainability Recognition: Any community member (or group) is invited to be nominated for recognition of their participation in programs that help support community-wide sustainability efforts.

All nominations can be submitted at this webpage.

For additional information, please visit the Earth Day Celebrations website.