Honors & Leadership Awards

An excerpt from Gus’s nomination: "Gus is always sharing many ideas of how they can connect with the student body even more. One of these ideas was to connect with students through a de-stress activity creating mindfulness glitter bears. By hosting this event at EAB’s Student Social and tabling on campus, Gus was able to build relationships with their peers, answer questions about upcoming events, and also ask students about how they engage with [Student Life] on social media. For this upcoming Pride month, Gus wanted to see our school mascot, Kody, celebrating the various identities our students hold. They are working on teaching students about the different pride color flags, and educating students on why our school mascot’s pronouns are they/them/theirs. I am excited for all the things Gus will accomplish for the rest of this quarter and into the future."

An excerpt from Allen’s nomination: "Allen’s work in the mail room has enabled him to work to bring new zero waste opportunities to campus, including reducing waste from shipping coming to our campus, installing new zero waste boxes for soft plastics in conjunction with UW Bothell’s EH&S department, and participating with the Terracycle zero waste boxes on campus. Allen’s work for his capstone is working on finding a way for the campus to create a staff bicycling option for transporting materials across campus for facilities and other staff projects, reducing the use of gas-powered vehicles, and traffic around campus. He has led other students in class, and pushed to find new ways for the campus to engage with outside partners including LEED certified buildings (connecting with Hopeworks), equity considerations through K12 forestry education with Friends of North Creek Forest, and special waste collections, like e-waste and hazardous waste collection."

An excerpt from Julianna’s nomination: "Julianna is a bachelor’s student, and so got involved with our bee campus research. However, beyond just that internship, she volunteered to present our campus’ bee research efforts to the Washington Higher Ed Sustainability Coalition’s Earth Week Conference, and then just thereafter, was chosen to be the host for the Library’s Community Reads panel on environmental justice. Julianna also assisted the student sustainability club with their outreach efforts and activities, both tabling and trash clean ups, and joined our campus sustainability committee to support as a student voice for campus engagement.

"Julianna has taken on a more active role working for the HaWRC, and is designing her capstone project to engage with outreach, student orientation, and support students on learning about sustainability resources on campus, opportunities to learn and engage, and create content for outreach for everyone – video, audio, and text/paper based, as she stated she wants sustainability efforts to be available to students, and accessible!"

An excerpt from Pedro’s nomination: "I highly recommend [Pedro] as a student because of his positive influence and strong leadership skills he has shown supporting the international student population, and student body population as a whole, as an iConnector.

"In addition to his role as an iConnector, Pedro volunteered to sit on the newly created E&I council as a student representative, on behalf of the international student population. In this role, he meets for monthly meetings to discuss possible ways that the Equity and Diversity Center can continue to best serve underrepresented students on campus. Often times, international students can feel like they are not a part of campus life, for many reasons including being homesick, or afraid to speak in English as their 2nd or 3rd language, and his voice on this student committee ensures that Cascadia is always thinking about the needs of international students as a whole, to improve retention and ensure each student’s future success."

An excerpt from Tiffany’s nomination: "Tiffany earned a 4.0 in the class and was a regular contributor to in-class discussions. In addition, she posted frequently (more than any other person) to an optional discussion board asking for students to share medical ethics cases in the news. Tiffany often shared cases that related to her job at Harborview or her volunteer work with homeless young adults (HIV testing, advocacy, and securing hepatitis B vaccine). Her experiences allowed her to help other students see how our theoretical class discussions applied to life outside Cascadia.

"Additionally, another reason I’m nominating Tiffany for this award is the work she’s done in the community working with homeless youth through Roots. Over the past two years she’s worked with this organization in various capacities because, in her own words, 'I have been working on changing the status quo on homelessness and dedicating my time to meet the needs of each guest whom I have the privilege to encounter.'

"She demonstrates a particular compassion with peers and is consistently willing to learn more to strengthen her skills. As she is the only Cascadia HERO, she uses her position to prioritize Cascadia students in wellness events and focuses awareness to specific groups of students such as Teen Dating Violence. She took time in researching statistics that affected young college students the most and worked on giving class presentations to ensure information was directly broadcasted. Furthermore, Tiffany has developed a book club on Cascadia campus where she encourages students to jump back into a hobby so easily lost from the stress of finals. I have been so easily inspired by her work with students on campus and have had the absolute pleasure to work with such an eager individual so passionate about health advocacy."

An excerpt from Tamara’s nomination: "As the Advocacy Chair she worked incredibly hard to make sure student voices were heard directly to the administration. While this is a part of her job, Tamara excelled in elevating student voices from a diverse population of students. For example, when a joint Cascadia/UWB survey was sent out earlier this year regarding safety on campus, Tamara single-handedly went out day after day talking to students in person to encourage them to fill out the survey and answer any questions they may have. Due to her diligence, 43% of survey results were submitted by Cascadia.

"Tamara is a thoughtful contributor. She has a special ability to create a welcoming presence in a conversation, at a meeting or during an event. I’m continually impressed by her ability to engage authentically with anyone she meets. Even as her time was winding down and she could have easily have slowed down on the work she was doing, she stayed vigilant to advocate on behalf of all students to the college president and Board of Trustees for increased mental health resource accessibility."