Ohio State's University Outreach and Engagement Awards honor faculty, staff and students for outstanding achievement in producing engaged scholarship and community impact. Congratulations to this year's recipients from the College of Arts and Sciences!

Community Engaged Scholar Awards

The Community Engaged Scholar Award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated co-created engaged scholarship that has positively impacted communities. Community Engaged Scholars have made significantly contributed to Ohio State's culture of engagement, further establishing and strengthening the institution's commitment to communities.

Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira’s work focuses on understanding genocide, forced displacement, sexualized violence and psychosocial trauma. This includes insights into predicting genocide and atrocities before they occur, how to intervene once violence is underway, and how communities and countries might effectively rebuild and reconcile after genocide, atrocity and mass violence. 

Learn more about this work from the Science Sundays archive

Community Engaged Practitioner Awards

The Community Engaged Practitioner Award recognizes staff members who have demonstrated superior commitment to developing, coordinating and/or sustaining projects, activities or initiatives involving Ohio State and community partners that enhance engaged scholarship and community impacts.

Terron Banner, Manager of Community Learning and Experience, Urban Arts Space

As an artist, Terron Banner advocates for open access, just resource allocation and culturally relevant decisions in the arts administration and arts management process. As an educator, he supports culturally responsive teaching that accounts for the lived experiences of students, and as a researcher he seeks to encourage education reform discussions grounded in cultural backgrounds and socioeconomics.

Leila Vieira, Assistant Director, Center for Latin American Studies

Leila Vieira’s work focuses on K-12 outreach through the Capoeira in the Classroom project and the Brutus calavera coloring contest as tools to promote the study of Latin American cultures to children and teenagers.

Programs of Excellence in Engaged Scholarship

To support and promote high-impact engaged scholarship, the Office of Outreach and Engagement has instituted a process to certify programs of excellence in engaged scholarship. The certification process seeks to identify and certify projects annually that demonstrate excellence in community engaged scholarship and meet the criteria of high-impact engaged scholarship.

• Community Music School, School of Music
• Marion Women’s Club and Ohio State Marion Collaboration, Department of History
• Activists in Motion, Department of Dance
• Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project, Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Department of African and African American Studies

Learn more about OPEEP on the Voices of Excellence podcast

See the full list of awards on the Outreach and Engagement website.