Campus Life hosted the 25th annual Student Gold Medallion Awards (SGMAs) virtually via a pre-recorded ceremony on Tuesday, March 23.

With nine categories for both individual students and student organizations, they are prestigious awards presented by the university. People who wished to nominate a student or a student organization for an award filled out the nomination form describing significant contributions made by the nominees.

Over 70 nominations were submitted this year which were narrowed down to just 14 winners; the categories were Advisor of the Year, Eagle Ambassador Award, Glenna Frank Award for Collegiate Leadership, Outstanding Leadership, Outstanding Mentorship, Outstanding Professionalism, Outstanding Volunteerism, Outstanding Student Org, and Outstanding Student Org Program.

Most categories had both an undergraduate and a graduate winner; winners were chosen by a committee of faculty and staff members at EMU.

Karen Thompson, the event programmer for the 2021 SGMAs, shared her thoughts about the event.

“The awards are super important every year because you definitely want to recognize the hard work that students do. But, I think this year even more so because it’s been really hard for everyone during the pandemic to stay focused, to stay motivated, to have the time and energy to give back to others and the university, so I think this year’s recipients are even more deserving because they managed to do all the amazing things that their nominators wrote about in their submissions during a pandemic,” Thompson said.

Tiarra Stallings was the undergraduate winner of the Eagle Ambassador award. She is a Detroit, MI native and a third-year Marketing major; she currently serves as the Vice President of Optimize Eastern and is the Communications Coordinator at the Center for Entrepreneurship at the EMU College of Business.

“It is truly an honor to have been nominated alongside so many amazing individuals who are doing great work on campus. I feel that winning this award is confirmation that I am in fact making a positive difference and it is motivation to continue giving back to the EMU community. I am in awe of the wonderful things we are able to accomplish as students and I just hope that I can inspire others to keep on doing great things that they are passionate about,” Stallings said.

A full list of the winners can be found here.

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