This year marks the 30th anniversary of Lehigh’s annual Student Life Leadership awards. Students were able to vote on which programs they believed were the best of the 2014-2015 academic year.
Every year Dean of Students Sharon Basso conducts a vote on the best educational, entertainment and cultural programs of that academic year. The winners of this vote are the programs that receive the Student Life Leadership awards. This year, the event will be held tomorrow at 4:10 p.m.
The awards recognize the “highest achievements in student campus and community involvement and leadership at Lehigh,” said Allison Gulati, the associate dean of students.
The nominations for the awards were collected throughout the month of January. Voting began on March 27 and ended April 10.
Some of the awards that people were eligible to be nominated for include the Outstanding Educational Programming Award, which recognizes an educational program created and implemented by students, and the Excellence in Entertainment Programming Award, which recognizes a program that provided engaging entertainment opportunities.
Awards at this event are selected by two committees.
Gullati said the university awards and prizes committee chooses winners for the top four awards given at this event and some awards at the Honors Convocation and Commencement. The Student Life Leadership Awards selection committee chooses the remaining award recipients. Both of these committees are composed of a combination of faculty members, university staff and students from across the different colleges of the university.
This is the fifth year the Student Life Leadership Awards have included a set of specific programming awards. In order to be eligible for these awards, it must be a program that’s primary goal is intended to benefit Lehigh students or the community.
Nancy Freeman, a coordinator in the Office of Student Affairs, said it also is primarily conceived, planned and implemented by students or a student club on campus. In addition, anyone may nominate programs that occurred in April of the last academic school year or anytime during this academic year.
The Office of Student Affairs received around six to 10 nominations of student programs for all three categories. From this, the student life leadership awards committee narrows that pool down to three programs in each category and puts those back out to the student body to vote on.
The programs that are selected from the three areas receive $500 toward programmatic planning for events next year.
Some programs up for an award include Black Lives Matter, which was a memorial at the flagpole in honor of Michael Brown and others who faced a similar fate; the Pride Walk, which was created as an opportunity for students from all different organizations to come together and display their visible support for the LGBTQ community; and the Gatsby Gala, a campus-wide formal event.
Rachel Davidson, ’17, said she voted for what she thought were the best programs of the 2014-2015 school year.
“The awards are important to me because it is a good way to express my support for the clubs and extracurricular programs here at Lehigh,” she said. “It will be interesting to find out which club and program wins each award.”
The winners of the award will be announced at the Student Life Leadership awards event tomorrow in Packard Lab 101.
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