Students will be recognized for their efforts in leadership and service during the upcoming Magis Student Leadership Awards.
On Tuesday, April 30, the Office of Student Affairs will host its 31st Annual Magis Student Leadership Awards at 7 p.m. in the St. Charles Room. The ceremony will include a dessert reception, entertainment and the presentation of these esteemed awards.
The different awards presented at this ceremony range from organization awards like the Outstanding Student Program of the Year Award to individual student awards like the prestigious Rev. James Carter Award for Outstanding Leadership.
Nominations for these awards, which ended on March 22, were open to the entire campus community. Students and organizations had the opportunity to be nominated by their peers for their recognizable excellence in leadership.
Heather Roundtree, director of Co-Curricular Programs in the Office of Student Affairs, and Robert Reed, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, commented on the importance of these awards to the students and the Loyola community.
“I think these awards serve a very special role in recognizing what students are doing outside of the classroom and the impact that they are having on campus and in the community,” Roundtree said. “It also gives students an opportunity to nominate each other for the work that they’ve seen their peers do.”
“In the Jesuit tradition, each year we honor those students and student organizations that provide exceptional leadership to the Loyola community,” Reed said. “That’s the reason that these awards are very important – to reward and encourage students and student organizations to continue to contribute to the Loyola community.”
Garrett Fontenot, Loyola alumnus and 2012 winner of the Rev. James Carter Award for Outstanding Leadership, said it was an honor to even be nominated for such a prestigious award.
“It is a great honor to have received the award, especially knowing that I was selected from my entire graduating class,” Fontenot said. “The greater honor, however, was being included in the list of nominees, since I knew many of them and the acts of leadership and service they performed on a daily basis for the university and the community.
These awards also provide an opportunity for the acknowledgement of an essential part of Loyola’s Jesuit education that otherwise would go unrecognized.
“These are actually the only awards [at Loyola] that focus on things like student leadership or student organization activities.” Roundtree said. “It’s obvious that we know what our students are doing outside of the classroom is significant, and we want to recognize students for that.”
Mary Graci can be reached at [email protected]
