Soren Spicknall
TEC H N EWS WRITER

Each Spring for the last 40 years,
Illinois Institute of Technology has presented
a set of awards to students who have been
designated by their peers and by staff as on,
campus leaders, a program set in place by
Armour Institute alum Clinton El Stryker,
who made a significant donation to the
University in 1972 with the mandate of
establishing expanded leadership programs
and recognition Today, between 15 and 25
Stryker Leadership Awards are bestowed upon
students recognized for their leadership efforts
each year, with selections made by the Office

 

Student newspaper of Illinois Institute of Technology since 1928

Nominations open for Babcock and Stryker Awards

of Student Affairs (OSA)l Now that Spring
is coming close, nominations have opened
once again for the awards, and students are
encouraged to nominate the most respected
leaders among them

In addition to more than a dozen
Stryker Award recipients, one student is chosen
each year to receive an even more significant
honor: the Richard A Babcock Leadership
Award While Babcock Award candidates are
technically nominated separately from Stryker
candidates (in the form of a checkbox used on
the same form,) in practice the applicant pools
for the two awards are essentially the same
By the nature of that fact, the annual Babcock
Award winner is informally considered to

be outstanding even among the Stryker
Awards group The nomination process for
the awards is fairly simple: a Google Form
on the website of the Office of Student Affairs
asks for the nominating individual to provide
some basic information for the person they’re
nominating (including CWID), to choose the
awards they’re nominating that person for, and
finally, to explain in one or more paragraphs
why they believe that person fits the criteria
to be considered among Illinois Tech’s most
distinguished leaders

The Stryker and Babcock Leadership
Awards are presented on Tuesday, April 19, at
the appropriatelyenamed Clinton El Stryker
Banquet, along with other important OSAe

  

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selected honors such as Outstanding Student
Organization and Outstanding Commitment
to Service The banquet includes many staff
and faculty members, and physical trophies
are presented to each Stryker and Babcock
Award winner Nominations for these student
leadership awards close March 12, and both
Stryker and Babcock nominations require
nominees to submit transcripts of their
extracurricular activities on and off campus
for consideration If you wish to nominate
somebody, you can find information about the
awards at webliitledu/studenteafiairsl

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Photo courtesy anllinm's Tech Student Affairs

Message from the new Editor-in-Chief

Anoopa Sundararajan
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

When I walked into the first
TechNews writer’s meeting in the Fall of 2013,
I was greeted by a host of enthusiastic staff
writers and editors As I write this, I realize
that I have them to thank for the title that
appears beneath my name in this article

For the past five semesters,
TechNews has been a significant part of my
life, one of the few unchanging constants in
the rapidly evolving world that is Illinois Tech
I started out as a fairly shy freshman who
didn’t want to share my thoughts or writing
publicly but wanted to contribute to TechNews
in some way , that’s where my journey as a
copy editor began. As a copy editor, I worked
on proofreading other writers’ articles and
every so often, doing that made me yearn to
write again I tried my hand at a few Campus
and Arts and Entertainment (A&E) articles
sporadically, sometimes collaborating with
fellow TechNews colleaguesl

One of the things I have always loved
about TechNews is that our open door policy
ensures that the people who consistently attend

meetings and contribute content do it out of
their own enthusiasm and passion, with no
compulsion or external driving force Having
said that, I have also discovered over the
years that there are a painfully large number
of students at our university who are unaware
or happily ignorant of TechNews and how it
works As adedicated staff member, I have been
gravely saddened by hearing fellow students
exclaim, “No one reads TechNews anywayl"
While this may sound wildly ambitious, I hope
that during my year as EditoreineChief, I am
able to bring about noteworthy change in the
attitudes that our fellow students have towards
our university paper If I am able to sustain
your attention for a few minutes, allow me to
highlight a few of the ideas I have for ways to
strengthen TechNews’ impact on campus

A concern that has been raised
repeatedly is in regards to TechNews’ meeting
time on Sunday afternoons, a time that may be
inconvenient for many commuting students or
students who live offcampus (or students who
just prefer to stay home and relax on Sundays)
However, an important detail to realize in
this situation is that Sunday afternoons and
evenings are the perfect time for staff to work

on copy editing and layout editing before the
paper gets sent to the printers on Monday
night A possible solution, though, is to have
TechNews staff pres ent on the bridge in MTCC
or other popular locations on campus during
the week to answer any questions or concerns
students mayhave, as well as update the Illinois
Tech community regularly on ways they can
contribute to TechNews without leaving the
comfort of their homes on a Sunday afternoon
if they don’t want to

Here at Illinois Tech, we are an
amazingly diverse group of people from over
a 100 different countries Yet, only a fraction
of our nearly 80007student population knows
about, reads and/or contributes to TechNewsl
As an international student myself who seeks
out opportunities to learn about different
cultures, I see this as a major opportunity for
positive change One avenue that I hope to
explore in pursuit of a more connected Illinois
Tech community is to reach out to all active
student organizations about their interest
in being featured in TechNews for what may
become a regular section on what’s happening
on campus and ways to be involved I am
also working towards a stronger relationship

between TechNews and SGA so that we can
make the SGA section a regular again, where
all students can read about the projects that
SGA is working on, get regular updates on
their progress and find out more about ways in
which they can be involved or share feedback

As we work towards a more
sustainable university and world, reducing
recyclable waste in the form of unread
newspapers is a serious issue I hope to work
on Every week hundreds of papers are left
untouched around campus and if we can find
ways to cut down on production rather than
recycle afterwards, we could work towards a
sustainable campus faster A lot of research still
needs to be done on this front before any steps
can be taken, but we are starting to discuss
ways in which this goal can be achieved within
the foreseeable future

I would like to thank you all for
reading this article and look forward to
receiving any questions and/or feedback at
editor@technewsiitlcoml I am incredibly
excited by this opportunity to work with the
Illinois Tech campus community and I look
forward to my year as EditoreineChief of
TechNewsl