The Louie Awards are back! After being in hiatus since the COVID pandemic, ASNAU is gathering nominations to recognize and celebrate outstanding members of the NAU community.
Angelica Brady, leadership and engagement coordinator at NAU, said these awards were created to recognize unsung heroes on campus in three categories: students, staff and faculty.
“These awards recognize people who have gone outside their roles or jobs,” Brady said. “People who work in the kitchen areas and dining, for example; people in housekeeping and landscaping; professors working in clubs or as advisors, things like that. People who do a lot of extra things outside of their normal jobs.”
The student award category recognizes those students who show a true Lumberjack spirit, with passion for academic excellence, personal growth and community involvement. Student nominees may be part of a student organization or may serve others on their own.
The staff category honors an employee who shows dedication to the university’s mission and goes above and beyond to support students and colleagues, showing leadership, empathy and commitment through their daily work.
The faculty award is for those who champion the values of academic excellence by mentoring and providing service to the university community, showing passion for teaching and inspiring students.
“At the moment, it is only open to the NAU Flagstaff mountain campus, so not statewide or online just yet,” Brady said. “As far as who can submit a nomination, any student, staff or faculty member of the NAU Flagstaff mountain campus can do it. There are not parameters on whether the person doing the nomination has to be here any amount of time, but the nominees do have requirements.”
Requirements include being at NAU for a year, whether in a full-time or part-time capacity. Students need to have at least a 2.0 GPA to be nominated. The winners will be selected by members of ASNAU and the Office of Leadership and Engagement, who will look at all the candidates to find those who represent the spirit of the awards.
“Some of the questions in the nomination form are things like, what specific achievements or contributions of the nominees have impressed you the most, and in what ways have they gone above and beyond their usual responsibilities to positively impact their Lumberjack community?” Brady said. “My favorite is one that asks the nominator to describe why this person is an unsung hero, because that is kind of the spirit of the award, to recognize someone who is not easily recognized or not as frequently recognized in the Lumberjack space.”
Brady said the hope is to have two awardees per category, but it will depend on how many nominations they receive. People can nominate up to three community members.
The deadline to nominate a student, staff or faculty member is 5 p.m. March 7“. Once the winners are selected, Wendy Peinado, chief programming officer of ASNAU and I will take the awards to them, bringing it to where they are so that we recognize them at their place of work,” Brady said. “I think this kind of falls in line with the spirit of the award.”
To nominate an NAU hero, you can fill out a submission form by visiting the Louie Awards page. For questions, please contact Angelica Brady at Angelica.Brady@nau.edu.
Mariana Laas | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5050 | mariana.laas@nau.edu