Sustainability Leadership Award 2025

Environmental sustainability as envisioned by UVA’s 2030 Sustainability Plan represents the University’s commitment to making the world a better place and being a good neighbor locally and globally, today and in the future. The Sustainability Leadership Award honors those who exhibit this outstanding dedication to advancing sustainability practices and solutions on Grounds and in the community. 

Winners exemplify innovation and passion in work related to civic engagement, stewardship of the built and natural environment, discovery through teaching and/or research, and governance and collaboration. 

Each winner or winning entity will receive $1,000, and all will be recognized at a May luncheon.  

The award, originally established in 2017, is sponsored by the Office for Sustainability, which has established a nomination process, evaluation rubric and Selection Committee. Meet last year's award winners!

2025 Sustainability Leadership Award Nomination Form 

Criteria

UVA candidates must:

• Be a current student/student group, faculty/department or staff/department at UVA or UVA College at Wise, or an employee of UVA Health, University Physicians’ Group or an affiliated foundation.
• Demonstrate commitment and/or actions to advance the UVA 2030 Sustainability Plan. 
• Not have received a prior UVA Sustainability Leadership Award within the past three years.   
• Conduct work in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, or nearby localities. 

Community member candidates must be: 

• Individuals or organizations based in Charlottesville, Albemarle County area (or nearby localities) engaging in work that exemplifies innovation and passion in community engagement, environmental conservation and stewardship, academic discovery, advances in governance or policy, or collaboration across local entities. This can include alumni or retirees.

Check out Sustainability Leadership Award Evaluation Criteria and Example Nominations.

Categories for submissions 

Projects, programs or initiatives could fall into one or more of these areas: 

• Engagement: Fostering sustainability awareness, literacy or action through innovative programs, communications, inclusive partnerships, peer-to-peer outreach and other pathways.
• Stewardship: Ensuring the sustainability of the built and/or natural environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen emissions, energy use, water consumption or waste, or increasing sustainable purchasing.
• Discovery: Fostering critical thinking and innovative solutions to local and/or global sustainability challenges through interdisciplinary and inclusive teaching or research.
• Governance and Collaboration: Incorporating sustainability into the University’s or the community organization’s leadership decision-making and collaboration strategies.

Nomination process and timeline

• 2025 Deadline: Monday, February 24, 2025 at 5PM.
• We encourage individuals and groups from all backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences to apply. 
• Individuals or groups can nominate themselves. Nominators will complete a survey form and provide evidence of the candidate’s commitment to or actions to advance sustainability. UVA candidates must demonstrate impact on the University’s sustainability goals.  
• Nominators will be informed of the Selection Committee’s decision in the Spring, followed by a public announcement.
• An award recognition celebration will be scheduled in May 2025.
• Watch this seven-minute video on the nomination process.

Award celebration

An event will be held to present the award to the winners and to help build the community of previous and current winners and University alumni and friends committed to sustainability issues, including the UVA Sustainability Alumni Network. The event will feature comments from University leadership and will highlight the work of the award winners as well as other examples of sustainability teaching, research, operations and engagement activities in the current academic year. View last year's slides recognizing each nominee!

For more information, email [email protected].

Starting in 2025, the Sustainability Leadership Award year was renamed to reflect the year in which the award is given for the work taking place primarily in the preceding calendar year. Thus last year's award winners were named "2023" and this year's award winners will be named "2025"; we did not skip 2024.