2022 Science for Society Team Award Winner Congratulations to URGE for being granted the first ever AGU Science and Society Team Award! Learn more about Unlearning Racism in Geoscience here.

Science for Society Team Award

Nominate here: https://www.agu.org/honors/science-and-society

The Science and Society Team Award is presented annually and recognizes a team who employs collaborative approaches of scientific research, demonstrates equitable distribution of the outputs and impacts of their research, and elevates efforts to produce and translate scientific knowledge to serve society. This award is unique in that it is tailored to recognize a team of researchers and their partners representing both scientific and societal interests, with the goal of jointly addressing societal needs. The team can be any group of people working toward a common goal.

Self-nomination is allowed.

Examples of types of projects that would be eligible for this award include but are not limited to: community and citizen science projects, research-to-practice or operations projects, and co-production driven research. The award recognizes both the scientific knowledge produced and effort and resources needed to ensure it is valued by those best suited to be informed by and use its products. 

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We would like to congratulate the Science & Society Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) winners. Read more about the winners on our SY Members Spotlight webpage. A big thank you to our OSPA judges and all the students who shared their research at Fall Meetings!

2022 Science & Society OSPA Winners

• Jacklynn Kay Beck, Ph.D. Candidate, Ohio State University
  
• Anna Lea Albright, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment

2021 Science & Society OSPA Winners

• Morgan DiCarlo, PhD Candidate, North Carolina State University
• Robert ("Robby") Goldman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (PhD Candidate); U.S. Geological Survey, Volcano Science Center (NSF Graduate Research Intern)

2020 Science & Society OSPA Winners

• Christopher Jadallah, Moving From “Outreach” to “Engagement” in the Design of Community and Citizen Science Projects
• Rachel L. Lamb, Coupling Advanced Forest Carbon Science with University Climate Action Planning
• Vinicius Perin, On-farm reservoir monitoring using Landsat inundation datasets
• Maria Pontiki, Physical Modeling on Dune Erosion: Design, Instrumentation and Experimental Observations

Outstanding Student Presentation Award

Our section’s goals for the Outstanding Student Presentation Awards (OSPA) program are to:

1. provide feedback and support for students from experts within their own subdiscipline,
2. help students build a network with people working in similar areas,
3. spotlight student work, and
4. recognize excellent work.

In 2022, our Science & Society (SY) section developed increased guidance to support these goals in the form of a rubric for OSPA judges to use when they evaluate students’ poster or oral presentations with numerical rankings and written feedback. The purpose of feedback is to improve student’s future performance. Studies of teaching and learning have shown that learners want to understand where they stand with respect to their work. OSPA judges have a responsibility to nurture students’ learning and generate valuable experiences that will foster growth and development. We hope increased guidance will help in fulfilling these goals and responsibilities, and, importantly, by approaching evaluation with a rubric and clear guidelines, SY is also trying to mitigate implicit bias in honors and awards.

Click here to download a PDF of the SY OSPA Guidance for Judges and Scoring Rubric. We encourage all students participating in OSPA in our SY sessions to take a look to better understand the type of feedback we aim to provide!

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Science & Society AGU Fellow

The Science & Society (SY) Section joins the Global & Environmental Change Section in celebrating Connie Woodhouse. She is the first-ever AGU Fellow with a SY affiliation. Congratulations Connie and thank you for your inspiring work at the science-society interface!

The Fellows program was established in 1962 and recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space science through a breakthrough, discovery, or innovation in their field. Fellows act as external experts, capable of advising government agencies and other organizations outside the sciences upon request. The program enhances the prestige of AGU and motivates members to achieve excellence in research.

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Past SY Awards

2017 Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winners

Outstanding Student Paper Awards (OSPA) are given to promote, recognize and reward undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students for quality research. The following students were recognized for their high-quality presentations at the 2017 Fall Meeting: Ann Ojeda, University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, for PA51A-0240: Renal Cell Toxicity of Water-Soluble Coal Extracts from the Gulf Coast, and Yi-Ling Hwong, University of New South Wales, for PA12A-03: We Engage, Therefore They Trust? A Study of Social Media Engagement and Public Trust in Science. Other section/focus group winners can be found on the AGU OSPA website.

2017 Ambassador Award Winners

Established in 2013, the Ambassador Award honors members whose achievements extend beyond those recognized by traditional scientific discipline awards. The award furthers AGU’s strategic goals to promote collaboration and innovation, inform society about Earth and space science, and build the global talent pool. The Ambassador Award is given annually to up to five honorees. This year’s winners are: Jean M. Bahr, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Robert A. Duce, Texas A&M University; and Richard C.J. Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University California, San Diego.

2016 Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winners

Outstanding Student Paper Awards (OSPA) are given to promote, recognize and reward undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students for quality research. The following students were recognized for their high-quality presentations at the 2016 Fall Meeting: Marshaun Montgomery, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Amanda Sorensen, Rutgers University.

2015 Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of Outstanding Student Presentation Awards from the 2015 Fall Meeting. This year’s winners from the SIPS Focus Group are: Jill Shipman, University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Kimberley Corwin, Boise State University; and Maya K. Buchanan, Princeton. Many thanks to all the SIPS members who judged student presentations and to our SIPS OSPA coordinators, Denise Hills and Linda Rowan.

2015 Student Travel Grants

Congratulations to the students who received travel grant support to attend the AGU Fall Meeting in 2015. The students include: Francisco Delgado, Cornell; Dylan McConnell, University of Melbourne; Lin Hui, Tsinghua University; Michael Norton, University of California, Davis; Sarah Kittross, Union College; Dario Solano Rojas, University of Miami and Ryan Haupt, University of Wyoming.