Student Involvement and Leadership Development congratulates the winners of the 2009 Student Organization Awards.  Award categories include Cultural Impact, Educational Impact, Leadership Impact, Philanthropic Impact, Advisor of the Year, Video Documentary, Outstanding Charter Organization, and Outstanding Organization.

The Cultural Impact Award honors an organization that has made significant cultural impact to improve the presence and quality of campus life.  The Hui Hau’oli Hawai’I Club performed at more than 9 major WSU events this year including their annual Mom’s Weekend Lu’au, focusing on unity and educating the community on the history of Hawaii’s first king, King Kamehameha.

This year’s Educational Impact Award went to Honors Student Advisory Council, as the organization was determined to best carry out significant educational programs, increasing the knowledge about an area relevant to their organization’s mission and interest.  While this organization focuses programming efforts towards their 400+ members of the Honors College, their events are open and advertised to all.  While focusing on increasing the number of events, the organization created programs ranging from the Earth and Economics Series to the Presidential Debates.

The Leadership Impact Award honors an organization that has developed a grassroots following on campus, and demonstrated significant internal improvement in their functioning and organization.  The Students in Free Enterprise has developed from only 1 committee member last year to 30+ team members this year managing more than 30 different projects.  This year the Students in Free Enterprise has completed 24 projects, impacting over 35,000 students and world community members, representing over 4,200 hours of student involvement.

The Philanthropic Impact Award honors an organization that has carried out a well organized and successful campaign to support a social cause.  V-Day at WSU is perhaps best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, a play that increases education and awareness in the community by starting the dialogue about violence against women and girls.  In the past 7 years V-Day at WSU has raised over $50,000, this year being their most successful yet, with over $10,000 raised.  Alternatives to Violence of the Palouse received 85%, with the remaining 15% going to the global V-Day spotlight cause, the Women and Girls of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Advisor of the Year Award honors an outstanding advisor that has gone above and beyond in contributing to RSO life.  This year’s award recipient worked to develop the Cougar Health Awareness Team (CHAT) with only a few students.  Today, CHAT consists of approximately 160 students, much to the credit of Marsha Turnbull, Health Education Administrator.  Marsha provides her organization with current educational programming national trends, constantly bringing new ideas for development to CHAT.  Ladan Maleki writes, “I believe Marsha is the spirit that drives our team and the rock that makes our team strong.”

The Video Documentary Award is new this year, allowing student organizations to document their Impact on campus through usage of Flip video cameras.  This year’s winner goes to Pi Kappa Phi Push America.  The video documentaries can be viewed online.

The Outstanding Charter Organization is a distinguished Greek chapter, ASWSU subcommittee, or sports club that has gone above and beyond to make an impact at WSU or in the Pullman community.  This year’s award goes an organization that has increased their membership from 7 last semester to 35 fully initiated members of Tau Kappa Epsilon.  This organization has experienced tremendous development this semester having attended retreats and conferences and participating at all levels of Interfraternity Council for the first time in years.

The Outstanding Organization Award honors an organization that has made a lasting impact at WSU or in the Pullman community.  Cable 8 Productions directly involves 200-250 students with a hands on opportunity to work with a television station, offering diverse television programming from campus reality shows to a college dating game show, and talk sports to a political talk show.  This organization also puts on additional events such as the Kristian Schulze-Makuch Benefit Concert, where Cable 8 has set a goal to raise $10,000 for a local boy from Pullman who is currently battling Cancer.  Cable 8 Productions is creating opportunities for WSU students to gain experience that is leading students to post-graduate opportunities and the organization has developed a great alumni base in the process.