The college has a long history of honoring outstanding individuals who both work for the college through our college awards and those beyond the college who exemplify our land-grant mission through Honorary Recognition. In both cases, the college uses discretionary gift funds, the most flexible of all of our revenue streams, to support these programs.

In order to conserve these flexible funds and redirect them to critical mission areas in the coming months as we prepare for a changing federal funding landscape, we will be altering our approach to awards this year. For both our internal and external awards, we plan to reduce the number we award this year. For college awards, we will present those supported by endowments specifically intended for this purpose.

This approach allows us to honor some of those making a significant positive impact on the college, and our related fields, while also maximizing our resources during these uncertain times.

CALS awards

We plan to hold our annual spring awards program honoring outstanding faculty and staff on May 7 and will award the following endowed honors:

Arthur J. and Ellen A. Maurer Extra Mile Award

Donald R. Peterson Farm Technology Transfer Award

Louise Hemstead Leadership Award

Robert R. Spitzer Teaching Excellence Award

WALSAA Outstanding Advisor Award

More information will be provided to nominators and recipients in the coming weeks, and everyone in the college will be invited to attend the program on May 7.

Honorary Recognition

Typically, we put out a call for nominations each spring, announce recipients in late summer, and hold an awards banquet in the fall. In 2025, we will reduce the scale of the event, and focus on alumni awards. 
We plan to recognize Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Recent Graduate honorees during the fall program. We will not issue a call for nominations for either category because we received so many high-quality nominations in both categories in the past several years that have carried over for this year’s selection process. We will not select Honorary Recognition or Distinguished Service honorees this year and we will make some changes to the format of the event. Details will be shared later in the year.